The Widow Killer (51 page)

“They’re following orders. Which say: no servants of former regimes.”

For the first time in a long while Morava felt himself turn red with embarrassment; just like little Jan from the
Bartered Bride,
Beran had always laughed.

“I’m from the criminal police,” he defended himself, “and the lieutenant served the republic, not the Protectorate…”

“A republic of exploiters and capitulators,” the coil announced. “But its time is up, and yours is too. We’re the security forces of the future Czechoslovakia, where the workers will rule.”

The lieutenant had meanwhile collected himself.

“Czechoslovakia will remain a democracy, represented by President Benes and the government in Kosice; I’m here at their orders. Are you planning a putsch, gentlemen?”

“Of course not,” the man in black very quiedy interjected, and it was immediately clear that he was in charge here. “We’re also here from the legitimate government via the Czech National Council. Here.”

He pulled out, unfolded, and displayed a sheet of paper.

“I have one too!” The lieutenant dug frantically through his pockets, finally finding it. “Are there two national councils, then?”

“Of course not,” the tall man repeated, now reminding Morava of a patient teacher, “but there are different factions; democracy is being restored and we represent the political forces that have obtained a clear majority in the council. In accordance with its resolutions, we are creating a new revolutionary militia from people untainted by the past. Its task here is, among others, to prevent collaborators from the ranks of the domestic bourgeoisie and bureaucracy from eliminating German witnesses to their treachery.”

“But that’s exactly what’s happening,” the runaway guard member exclaimed.

“What?”

“They’re torturing them!”

“Who? Whom?”

“Your people! Are torturing Germans. Civilians! Take it back…” He stuffed his armband into the man’s hand. “I don’t want to be like the Nazis.”

Another car pulled up behind Morava’s back; its door slammed. Warily he turned and his soul leaped. Matlak and Jetel were there behind Litera; both of them had submachine guns. The forces were now balanced, and Morava quickly roused himself to action.

“Is torture one of your ‘tasks,” then?“ he asked sharply.

“Nonsense!”

For the first time, the black-suited man was upset and spoke loudly. Morava did not back down. He showed the man his badge.

“A charge of serious criminal activity has been made and we”—he pointed to his foursome, including the new police driver—“are detectives. If it’s true, then the international convention on treatment of civilian prisoners—” Grete Baumann! A thought flashed through his head: How is she? Got to check as soon as possible! Then he continued, “is being violated as well. And if we’re all part of one and the same government, then I appeal to you: Honor the reinstated law of this land and investigate the accusation together with us!”

The wiry one was about to object, but the man in the hat silenced him with a gesture.

“We have nothing to hide. But if it’s a lie, then you’ll prosecute him”—he pointed to the breathless man—“for slandering the revolutionary authorities.”

Although the boys at the gate played soldiers for them again, no one paid them any further attention. The excited lieutenant hurried ahead toward the left and apparently main entrance, but once there timidly stood aside, despite the fact that it had started to rain again. The black-clothed man entered first, with Morava behind him. A stench from his childhood assailed his nostrils, the identical smell of primary schools everywhere: a pervasive mixture of dust, sweat, and disinfectant wafting from the toilets and the open cloakrooms lining the school classrooms. When they reached them they stood stock-still in amazement.

The lockable cubicles surrounded by metal grillwork were filled with people. Displayed before their eyes like animals in a zoo, but packed as densely as in an overfilled tram, the cage’s silent inhabitants were primarily women, children, and the elderly. Occasionally one of the children would sob, and the newcomers would catch the fleeting movement of an adult hand covering the small mouth.

Only now did they notice the distant murmur of male voices. It suddenly intensified as the doors at the end of the hallway opened and three Revolutionary Guards entered. Seeing the police and army uniforms, the men rushed toward them, shouting hysterically, “Stop! Who let you in? What do you want?”

The man in black stepped forward in front of Morava, this time making no effort to back up his statement.

“My name is Svoboda; I’m a member of the Czech National Council and of the Central Committee of the Czechoslovak Communist Party. Who are you?”

The bristling trio drooped; their spokesman was almost embarrassingly unctuous in response.

“Excuse me, sir… I mean, comrade… I’m Lokajik, assistant to the local commander…”

The black-clad man interested Morava more and more. He remembered his grandfather, father, and all their neighbors sitting in the taproom after Corpus Christi service, pointing at a diminutive man who stood at the bar, sipping plum brandy. Look over there, his father nudged little Jan, who had been teasing the house cat under the bench and was already a mass of scratches; that’s a Communist! What’s that, Jan had inquired, and he had learned: He doesn’t go to church and wants to take everything we own away from us.

He had timidly watched the unshaven man with his luxuriant forelock, but the Communist’s stubborn aloofness somehow attracted the boy at the same time. Whenever Morava heard or read about Communist crimes during the war he thought of this man, a black sheep in a pious and pitifully barren land.

The prisoners, crammed into children’s cloakrooms, observed the scene mutely. It was as evidently unpleasant for the Communist as it was for Morava.

“Let’s move along!”

They went around the corner into the entrance hall.

“Why haven’t they been split among the classrooms?” he asked Lokajik quietly. “For God’s sake, whose idea was it to lock them up like animals?”

“The team decided…” the assistant commander said defensively. “Well, they were acting like animals earlier!”

One of his escorts flared up.

“Do you know what they were doing? Throwing grenades into shelters with children in them! Chasing us with tanks!”

“These people?”

“A German’s a German!” the man countered angrily. “An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth! And for the record: I’m a Communist too.”

“Is that so?” Svoboda answered icily. “Then instead of the Bible, quote this: ‘Hitlers come and go, but the German nation remains.” Do you know who said it?“

Once again Svoboda was a teacher, and the man stumbled like a pupil caught unprepared.

“No…”

“Comrade Stalin. And if you’re really a comrade, you should employ a class approach, not a nationalist one. Listen up!” Svoboda addressed the guardsmen, police, and soldiers, trying to rally the motley bunch around a common task. “Any Germans who have committed crimes will be punished severely and mercilessly, but we are depending on the German workers to help us bring about a worldwide socialist revolution. This human menagerie,” he pointed to the hallway, “is a stain on our ideals. Comrades, transfer them into classrooms immediately, men apart, women with children!”

“Yes…” his men chirped, including the rebel.

“And what’s happening there?”

Svoboda pointed, and Morava could hear a clamor of men’s voices in the distance. The trio were even more hesitant.

“There…” Lokajik forced the words out, “that’s where they’re interrogating—”

“Who, whom, and why?”

“Our men are interviewing the Germans… about hidden valuables…”

The high functionary headed toward it. The rest of them followed him wordlessly down that depressing hall past the cages, where only the sniffling of a child’s nose could be heard. The din grew louder until only a door separated them from its source.

“You first,” Svoboda ordered the three locals.

They proceeded behind him into the school gymnasium, so similar to the one where young Jan Morava had trained his muscles. It had never occurred to him that a gym could serve admirably as a torture chamber.

Like school classes practicing in teams on various contraptions, groups of guardsmen were gathered around the equipment. One of them always had a notebook, pad, or piece of paper in his hand, as if grading their efforts. The focus of their attention however, was not gymnasts, but half-naked men, each tied to an apparatus: one to the handles of the pommel horse, another to the crosspieces of the wall bars, a further one to the grips of the Swedish box. The fourth, on a diagonal ladder, was stretched out by his hands and feet, like in the dungeons of old. The final man was swinging, arms and legs bound, from low-hanging rings.

The outsiders’ entrance attracted no attention; the guardsmen were apparently engrossed in the task at hand. On the rings nearby, the hanging man had just gotten a slap hard enough to start him swinging again.

“Make sure you remember all your stashes,” the man with the paper encouraged him in German. “If we find any more in your apartment you can kiss good-bye to any hope of ever seeing your family again.”

“We had all our valuables with us,” the swinging man rasped brokenly. “You already took those…”

Morava forced himself to suppress his emotions and scour the ghastly scene for his man.

It was clear that Svoboda was also on the brink of exploding.

“Put a stop to it,” he ordered Lokajik. “Have them unbound and taken away. Then I want to have a talk with all the Czechs. And introduce me!”

The surprise order was not welcomed, but it was carried out. Morava, however, was already sure that Rypl was not in the gymnasium, and Litera, Matlak, and Jetel shrugged in unison as well. However, he saw an unfamiliar bald man hastily leave the room through the doors opposite. There had been someone similar in the radio station gang…

“Where do those doors lead?” he asked Lokajik.

“To the stairs to the auditorium, to the cellar and the toilets…”

“Have a look there,” he requested Litera, “but be careful…”

When only the Czechs were left and Svoboda had been introduced to them, he repeated roughly what he had earlier said in the entrance hall, but this time his voice rang sonorously through the large gymnasium; he must have been wonderful at political rallies. Morava noticed admiringly that even with these frustrated torturers the Communist did not mince words.

“Instead of revolutionary justice,” he finished, “you’ve reintroduced the rule of torture, like in the Middle Ages!”

The guardsmen’s initial respect for his position and appearance dissipated; they progressed from muttering to open disagreement. Even then the man in black managed skillfully to keep control.

“I am stopping all interrogations in this form. Procure some water and food for the interned. Then take personal details and question them, but in a civilized fashion. The guards we send to confiscate items from the apartments will find everything anyway. Or was anyone planning to make a private visit?”

Morava watched the gymnasium quickly divide into three camps: One group was visibly ashamed, another was hissing like wounded geese, and a third seemed deeply indignant.

“Look here.” One of the note takers shoved his papers at Svoboda. “Every German mark, every ring, everything is recorded; I’m no criminal, I’m a patriot, and this is justified retribution!”

“Maybe not you, comrade,” Svoboda responded, “but opportunities like this make criminals. We Communists will not permit people to muddy the waters and then go fishing in them for property that rightfully belongs to the whole nation.”

To further his own goal, Morava quietly asked him, “Where’s the commander?”

The black-garbed man rephrased the question. “Who’s in charge here?”

“Captain Roubinek.”

“They didn’t tell you the RG doesn’t take old officers?”

“He was a partisan. He brought a whole group here from the forests.”

“And where is he?”

“They’re in the cellar… interrogating Germans…”

He! They! Now Morava was sure, but suddenly he felt nervous: Where was Litera? Why wasn’t he back? He had Rypl’s photos too!

“Should I go fetch him?” Lokajik asked ingratiatingly.

“We’ll drop in ourselves,” the envoy decided. “Meanwhile put things in order here, comrades!”

His speech had impressed Morava.

“Could I ask you for a couple of words in private,” he requested of the Communist.

“Of course,” Svoboda answered, still a bit defensively, “but quickly.”

A few steps were enough to give them a noisy solitude. Morava looked him straight in the eyes.

“Call me a kolaborant, or a kolous, as they now say, but for the last three months my only ‘collaboration’ has been hunting a depraved murderer who sadistically tortured six women to death, killed three more people, and is now murdering Germans on a conveyer belt. That lieutenant of yours claimed that they’re killing people here as well; I think we’ll find the perpetrator in the cellar masquerading as one Captain Roubinek.”

Svoboda listened intently to him without interrupting.

“I want to secure him and present him to our witness so he can be convicted. But he’s already in charge of his own well-armed gang and has infiltrated your peacekeeping forces, apparently all the way to the top. Will you help us?”

The Communist tried to digest this.

“Are you absolutely sure?”

“Absolutely!”

“That’s terrible…”

These new Job-like tidings shook Svoboda, coming so soon on the heels of everything he had observed in his short time here, but he appeared to accept them.

“What do you suggest?” he asked, practical once again.

“He’s the only one we know by name; we just have descriptions of the rest, and by now there may be more of them. The killer must have a diabolical charisma that attracts anyone who, deep in his soul, is a deviant; he knows how to unleash their blood lust. Mr. Svoboda… I don’t know how to address you, I’ve never been interested in politics, but at the beginning of the Nazi era, all the psychopaths who had been waiting for their moment suddenly ran riot. I’m afraid now the stench of bloodletting is luring them here, even if many don’t yet know they have it in them. What will it do to my homeland? And to your ideals?”