The Widow Killer (53 page)

“What are you writing?” he heard her say.

She looked sickly, but tranquil; only there was an unfamiliar gleam in her eyes, as if she were preparing herself for something exceedingly grave.

“A letter…” he answered, confused.

“To whom?”

“To you,” he confessed.

“Aha… and what are you writing to me?”

“You can read it. But not right now.”

“I understand,” she said, “yes, I understand… But you should know first what I was really so afraid of that I tried to leave you and go I don’t know where…”

“What was it?”

“That we’d both survive.”

He thought he had misheard.

“That we both wouldn’t survive…”

“No, the opposite! That we’d survive, and you’d finally learn…”

“Learn what?”

“Buback… love! You listened so patiently to my stories for so long, try just once more not to interrupt, no matter how much you want to. Promise me!”

It was less than fifty days since he first furtively scrutinized her in the sharp light of the German House air-raid shelter. An eternity seemed to have passed since that meeting. Fifty days ago, he admitted shamefully, he’d still believed in the possibility, however small it might be, that Germany could avoid a total and dishonorable defeat. And when he had despaired on realizing the truth, Grete had led him away from the pistol that would have ended his pain. Today it was she who had reached rock bottom.

“I promise!” he said.

“My love… as we were on our way here—it was only yesterday, but I’ve aged since then—I noticed that view, those breathtaking towers, and imagined the stony desert that awaits us at home; Germany lies in rack and ruin, defeated and humbled for generations, because revenge is sweet and the world is itching to enslave us as punishment: poverty, cold, and bondage will dog us till the end of this century and beyond, and I, unfortunately, am one of the many German women who let our men degenerate into barbarians that make your widow killer look like an amateur… now I can’t remember which Greek poet said withholding pussy can become a weapon, forcing men to give up war so they can fuck again—what rubbish!—after all, millions of German women quivered with impatience to see whether their men would send French perfume or Russian furs from the occupied territories, and millions more, like me, convinced themselves they lived only for love, and hate had no place in their lives, so I too played my part in the destruction of our world, and now I’m going to fix it by dancing on Sylt?… oh, love—and pay attention now— that too was the fruit of my sick imagination, just like all the tales I fed my best lovers, so they would keep me as their femme fatale: the tale of the loving young husband, the tale of the mysterious Giancarlo or Gianfranco, whatever it was, and the tale of my tragic love for a theater star—because, you see, Hans finally chose his boyfriend over me, and if they haven’t perished then they’re still secretly in love; that mafioso Gianwhateverhisnamewas from Rome slept with me once in his elegant hotel and then disappeared, while I spent the remaining nights with the hotel chauffeur, who would bring me back after midnight to the pensione in a silver Lancia to the envy of my colleagues, but not, unfortunately, of Martin Siegel— to my sorrow he loved his beautiful wife from the very beginning to the bitter, dogged end, which his devastated spouse described to me so vividly that those adventures gradually became my own past, the kind I wished I had; I was so wild with grief that when this wound on my neck came up I completely blocked out my father the tinsmith, who when I was a child accidentally burned me with a blowtorch—yes, love, this truly is the truth, and in the end I served up all these lies to the first man I ever called my love, because he was the only one worth it, the only one who persuaded me to give up the sure for the unsure, and now, finally, has convinced me to entrust him with my true fate: that of an unsuccessful wife and a dime-a-dozen dancer— when I realized you were the only one who ever really loved me, and as your debtor I decided—and listen closely—to be worse in your eyes than I made myself out to be, so I could therefore be better than I am; do you understand me, love?”

She fell silent, but the question shone on in her gray eyes.

He had to answer, he wanted to, but he didn’t have the right words, the ones that would express the feeling now filling him: that in her confession of false confessions he had found, after all his losses, the only worthwhile trace of his earthly wanderings.

“You don’t respect me at all any more, do you…” she blurted, shattered, “but I simply had to…”

At that moment he knew precisely how to say it, but before he could speak, the bell below jangled.

“Who is it?” she asked fearfully.

“I don’t know…”

“Does Morava know our signal?”

“He might have forgotten…” He wanted to calm her down, but did not believe it himself.

Someone gave the bell two long rings.

He could see fear taking hold of Grete and took action.

“Clothes! Quickly! And under the bed, with the pistol. Don’t show yourself until I tell you to.”

“But what if they—”

“I’ll manage.”

“But…”

A triple long ring.

“Do it!”

“Yes…”

“And no panicking. You’ve got a weapon.”

“Yes…”

He waited for her to dress lightning-fast and disappear beneath the bed, which he managed meanwhile to make up. Anything of hers he saw he shoved over to her with his leg. Finally he was satisfied nothing would give away her presence.

The fourth ring caught him on the steps. Only now did it occur to him that they hadn’t said farewell. But why should they have—why did he even think of it—he’d be back with her in a moment. It might be Morava’s driver, probably with the food, but if not, both Buback’s documents would, after a certain time, secure his safety with either side.

He opened the door wordlessly, waiting to see whether he should speak German or Czech.

When he saw the man at the bell, he knew it did not matter.

Morava cried as they brought Litera out. The tears he had held back since Jitka’s death, so completely that some were scandalized, now streamed down his face; he could not see the steps and had to hold on to the cellar wall.

He felt his colleagues gradually take him by the shoulders and try to calm him, but the dam inside him, built with all his strength to fend off precisely this limitless despair, had finally broken.

The reason for his disintegration was simple shame. He had betrayed Litera because he had failed in his craft, acted like a rookie in sending an unsuspecting man to a pointless death.

Now he had found a powerful ally willing to set all the loyal Communists in Prague on Rypl’s trail to stop his rabble from cropping up somewhere else. But instead of rejoicing, he was mourning the third death on his conscience. And three times, he repeated to himself in shock, three times the killer had been within his reach. Who else would pay for his incompetence?

Instantly he thought of Buback and Grete. Morava knew he was their only hope against the coming fury. And a new horror seized him.

To his own amazement, he had seen an old saying confirmed several times: A murderer does return to the scene of the crime. If so, Rypl too might be tempted to hide his band in the apparently deserted house…

Eyebrows rose as what a moment ago had been a broken man now straightened up and called out to Svoboda.

“It’s an emergency! Two cars and ten men!”

At first he took him for a copper still sniffing around for something, and he’d have had his knife ready if that idiot of a stoker hadn’t panicked and left it in the lady. Then they took a good look at the guy and gaped: They’d caught a rare specimen, a real Gestapo officer!

From the first the German was stonily silent, but he had no intention of asking any questions. The less his men knew, the better; at any rate they’d see living proof that the Krauts had been hunting for their leader.

The loss of his knife was a symbol that the olden days were over. He wanted to use this creature for his latest idea.

A NEW PURGATION.

He would reenact the words of Scripture that she used whenever she remembered the Hungarians who had wounded him.

Burn that robbers’ den!

Why not extend it to Krauts as well? Why not frighten away the darkness they had brought here—with their own torches?

He had the Gestapo killer bound with his straps, unwinding them for the last time from his body; they too deserved a fitting farewell. Then the men gasped as he strung the Kraut up by the feet from the lamppost, which stood rusty and bulbless in a time of blackouts.

Darkness had just begun to fall on this long day, and he looked forward to seeing all of them and the whole neighborhood nicely lit.

“The canister,” he ordered.

The pain quickly passed from his bound ankles, which bore the weight of his whole body, and the blood thrummed more and more pleasantly through his head as it hung toward the ground; strangely enough, he felt curious, as if this were not happening to him, but to someone who would not be harmed by it.

As he turned slowly there and back, there and back, he glimpsed unusual scenes from this birdlike, froglike perspective: there—above his head, the pavement moved, shimmering after the rain; now back— he made out a distorted lilac bush, whose flowers had just begun to emerge; there again—he spotted guns leaning against the wall of the hallway; back—he saw one man working as the rest stood guard.

The pleasantly sharp smell of wet earth and greenery was supplanted by a pungent stench. He could guess its purpose, and because they had not gagged him, he was curious whether or not he would scream. The fumes made him feel dopey and light.

The only real surprise was that there was nothing especially noble about the end of his life. He should think about someone, that was it!

But he couldn’t remember a name or even a face…

He slopped all the gasoline carefully on the rolled-up pants legs, the flannel shirt, and finally the hair.

Everything was ready, but he deliberately drew out the ritual so as to appreciate every detail.

That time in Brno, at the rocky beginning of the road that led him here, he had been so anxious and hasty that later he only remembered the disgusting parts.

He wanted to remember what made today festive and unique. He wasn’t just a flunkey from the theater cellar anymore; now he stood on the stage, admired and feared, with a show far beyond what anyone here had ever seen.

I’ve reached the goal, mother!

“Matches!” he requested, and was even pleased that no one obeyed; they were all rooted to the spot.

He pulled out the box he had found in the kitchen.

He swung around to face the man who had stood in the doorway. From up close he followed the fingers as they removed a single match from the box, closed the box again, and put the tip to the striking strip.

Then something moved in the doorway, someone—his eyes were smarting, and he couldn’t see who it was—left the house and came toward him.

Scrape. The match head leaped dazzlingly into flame at his side. Somewhere nearby the men shouted a warning.

The figure raised a hand with something gleaming to the man’s head.

In that endless second before he burst into flames, Buback saw a brain splatter.

What Morava saw from the car looked like a giant gas cooker gone up in flames with a bang. Then he saw a burning spindle, a woman shooting, and four men in flight. In the clear flame a figure appeared, as if dipped headfirst into glass.

Now they were out of the car and could hear skin crackling in the deathly silence of the fire.

Grete Baumann, the gun still clutched in her outstretched hand, stared motionless into the flame.

The body in it began to shrink, moving twitchily about as if it were exercising. When the straps burned through, it jumped down and smothered Rypl’s corpse in a glowing embrace.

AFTERWARD

Good evening, my beloved, he said and sat down across from her; so it’s finally happened: Tetera (remember?—who liked you so much that I got jealous and had to let you know how I felt about you), our former garage manager and now the commander of Prague’s National Security forces, had his candidate, but Svoboda, now a general and deputy interior minister, wouldn’t have it otherwise—of course, it was Beran who decided it for me; believe me, Jan, he told me this morning at the hospital, you’d be my choice, he said, if I had one, just be careful, Jan, he went on, and that was all; I could only assume he was warning me not just about Tetera, but Svoboda too—you see, he’s so used to staying outside politics and was so insulted by his short imprisonment that he sees filth wherever he turns, especially among the Communists; I tried to explain that these days there are riffraff everywhere and that there are Communists and Communists (I’ve seen Svoboda make order in a lion’s den, and he accepted me in a uniform he personally loathes, despite what his lifelong comrades said); those five days of the uprising gave me more than all my years of schooling and service, Beran excepted, so I told him this, and I said that committed Communists like Svoboda will do this country more good than shortsighted democrats who refuse to admit that they caused the economic crisis and the Munich agreement—now they’re calling on the West again, the same West that betrayed us before, and they’re slandering the Soviet Union, which liberated us; oh, the lilacs are still blooming, beloved, the ones that blossomed overnight in Prague a week ago Wednesday, when the Red Army miraculously appeared in our hour of need and finally put an end to the war; people accuse the Soviets of hunting down their countrymen like rabbits and taking no prisoners, but after all, in helping Prague, Vlasov’s men were just hiding their real reason for wanting to get to the West: to continue fighting against their motherland—that’s what Svoboda says and I believe him: When Svoboda supported the exploited workers, our republic put him in prison, and still he spilled his blood in Spain for the cause; for six years he lived like an outlaw in basements and forests, fought while we just waited, his health is broken and he tires easily, but still he’s like a pillar that holds up the bridge even during the worst floods; his attitude toward the imprisoned Germans has earned him respect and angered those who joined the victors in the thirteenth hour to reap what they didn’t sow and avenge what they themselves didn’t suffer—it was ghastly to find your murderer was one of them, my beloved: Fortunately he’s dead, killed, as it happens, by the German woman who helped us and whom I’ve just helped, even if the others got away and we have no idea who they are, but at least Svoboda’s been warned— in the turmoil of a revolution, people can barge into his quickly growing party from anywhere; it’s unsettling and dangerous, but it helped me better understand the question he asked today: whether I’d like to join them and rise above the frontlines to where they’re struggling for the future; why not stand by his side?… and I’m seriously thinking about it, beloved, I’m trying to decide what stops Jan Morava from letting people like Svoboda call him comrade; I’ve seen too much depravity and made enough mistakes myself—it’s high time to join the side that has a vision for a better world, and to strive for it with them, for your sake too, that’s what I wanted to say to you today, my beloved, so farewell until tomorrow and good night…