by Pavel Kohout
Then they would head back to one house or the other, depending on whose turn it was to prepare lunch. Over the meal they would talk about what had happened to them, and try to guess when and how the war would end—and what they would do then. They soon admitted to each other that their husbands had disappointed them. They honored the memory of the departed, but believed that once freedom came, a new and better chapter of their lives as women would then begin.
Today they had met as usual, Marta still in black, Hedvika—who simply could not stand the color anymore—in long beige slacks and a quilted bodice, with a kerchief tied around the top of her head. This time they set off for Pankrac, where at Marta's a rare treat awaited them: potato pasta with poppyseeds.
She had barely begun to cook it, adding the rabbit lard sparingly, when the doorbell rang. Marta's husband had worked the night shift every third week; at his wife's request he had equipped the door with a solid chain lock. Now it allowed her to open the door without fear. She spotted an unknown man in a smallish winter coat, unbuttoned to reveal a mouse-colored suit. In one hand he held the stuffed briefcase of an office worker; with the other he raised a flattened hat.
"Excuse me for disturbing you," he said politely, "but I was told that I might find Mrs. Horakova here."
"Yes, of course...."
Although only a month had passed since they met, it did not surprise Marta to find someone asking after her friend here. Out of habitual caution she left the chain hitched and called into the kitchen.
"Hedvika, there's a man here looking for you...."
Even the other woman was not too surprised; she too, in the short time they had known each other, had started thinking of her friend's house as home. She came into the entrance hall, and the man through the slit in the door raise his hat again.
"Mrs. Horakova?"
"Yes...."
"I'm sorry to drop in on you like this, but it's in your interest. Your husband perished in the February air raid, didn't he?"
"No! There's been a mistake."
His hand, which was just replacing the hat, suddenly shook severely. It seemed to both women that he was about to faint.
"That was my husband," Marta exclaimed, "Radomir Pavlat."
"My husband, Ludvik Horak," Hedvika added, "lost his life last year during the Totaleinsatz in the Reich."
The visitor immediately calmed down.
"I must just have mixed up the names, then; I do apologize. As it happens, it concerns both of you. The offices of the Protectorate will be paying the families of air-raid and Totaleinsatz casualties a lumpsum compensation. I'm distributing questionnaires that must be filled out and signed. When they sent me here, I never thought I'd be able to take care of both you ladies."
"Why don't you come in?" Marta offered, and pushed the door to, so she could unhook the chain.
"But who sent you here?" Hedvika suddenly wondered. "I don't think anyone in my building knew—"
The man was already in the apartment and slammed the door behind him. His free hand suddenly held a long, thin knife.
"One word out of you," he hissed, "and I'll cut your throats."
At first glance Lieutenant Colonel Hinterpichler was a lover of good drink, better suited to lederhosen than a buttoned-up uniform. As head of the anti-black market and economic sabotage division, he had apparently been appropriately instructed by Meckerle. Hinterpichler passed his assistant the sheet of paper where Buback had written the name and address of Jitka's father (obtained from Beran that morning by telephone), and ordered the man to connect him immediately with the head of the appropriate office.
He offered Buback a cognac, which he claimed was an old French variety just seized from a black marketeer, and for a few minutes made small talk with him as if they were old chums in a pub. Finally one of the phones on his desk rang. Like an actor finishing his coffee and stepping onstage to play a sovereign, he instantly modified his voice and demeanor. Suddenly he was every inch a high functionary of the forces everyone feared so greatly, including their own employees.
Having demonstrated his authority, he listened silently to his subordinate in Moravia. The gold pen in his hand hung poised over the paper. Finally he asked a question.
"How is he physically? Can he stand a few knocks?"
Shortly thereafter he nodded contentedly and made his pronouncement.
"Slap him around a bit, but don't overdo it. Then stick him with a heavy fine and let him go. Heil Hitler."
He replaced the handset and, back behind the curtains, was jovial again, giving Buback a conspiratorial wink.
"A bit of a drubbing will squelch any suspicions that we've recruited him as an informer; that's what you want, isn't it?"
He grudgingly admitted that it was; he just did not know how he would explain it to the man's daughter. He stood up, so as not to put his discomfort on display.
"Thank you, Obersturmbannfuhrer; it will make my work considerably easier."
"It's nothing, really," Hinterpichler grinned smugly. "Pig slaughtering is probably part of the local culture; we'd have to hang all of them. Better to punish a few randomly and keep it under control that way.
Back in his old office Buback breathed deeply in and out a few times, but could not calm down. Getting angry at himself helped; it was an old habit that had pulled him through many a life crisis. Have I lost my mind? Why am I behaving like an adolescent? He had the switchboard put him through to the Czech criminal police and instantly heard her voice (what was so special about it? Yes! Now he knew: She always sounded like she was just waking up).
"Buback here," he managed to say impersonally. "Is this Miss Modra?"
"Yes...."
"You were kind enough to accept my invitation for dinner tonight."
"Yes..."
"Would half past seven suit you?" Yes...
"Where shall I pick you up?"
He noted the address and closed the conversation as officially as he had begun it.
"Please inform Mr. Morava that I expect him in my office at Bredovska Street as soon as possible."
He hung up none the wiser about what he was after that evening. Having no other work at the moment to distract his attention, he continued to fret over it.
He had no illusions that any normal Czech woman would, given the current situation, fall in love with a German, much less a Gestapo agent (she would certainly think he was one, and he was not allowed to disabuse her of the notion). And he was almost a quarter-century older than her—easily enough to be her father. He probed deeper, asking himself what led him to hope against hope, and realized what it was. In these five years of war he had met countless people in extreme situations, and more than once had seen relationships develop that would be completely unthinkable under normal conditions.
After all, the situation in the Protectorate could (and apparently would) become so dire overnight that the father's savior might well become the daughter's only protection as well. He could even remove her from Bartolomejska before Meckerle's strike against the Prague police— which he would help prepare.
But, for God's sake, how should he behave tonight? This Czech twin of his Hilde, just like her predecessor, lowered her eyes every time he entered. What if he tried to overcome that shyness in a stroke, as he'd done in his first life in Dresden ... ?
He cut short his musings when Beran's boy entered. Buback had pretended to have desk duty here today, as if he had to explain why they were not meeting in his office at Bartolomejska Street. This ploy made him even angrier at himself, so he was not particularly pleasant to Morava, which irritated him further. It's a vicious circle; discipline, Erwin. He concentrated on the official announcements Morava had provided him with, and saw that the drafts were fine. Approving both texts without changes, he ordered Kroloff to arrange for the publication of the shorter one tomorrow in all the German papers across the Protectorate.
With this they were done, but the kid remained seated. Earlier he had conducted himself in a calm, effi
cient manner, but now his eyes searched Buback's face with a tense expression.
"Is there something else?" Buback queried.
The Czech shook his head and stood up awkwardly, but before he took his leave and turned toward the door his face flushed red. What was on his mind? Another request for help? Then why didn't he say so? Meckerle had basically given him a green light; he could help in other matters as well, as long as the Gestapo's magnanimity didn't become too obvious. The more personally he could intervene on behalf of Jifka Modra, the happier Buback would be to work toward the success of his mission.
Remembering her diverted his thoughts again down that same channel with an insistence that almost frightened him. How could this be? A month ago only Hilde had existed for him; even dead, she had filled his life and blocked even the slightest flicker of other emotions.
He felt it again that evening, as the girl appeared beneath the blinded lantern in front of her house, on a suburban street his driver had spent ages searching for in the darkened city.
Her placid beauty (he could describe it no other way) was even more vivid in the near-darkness; her eternally sleepy voice moved him, though she was merely explaining that she had not been waiting long; no, she had just come outside, because it occurred to her they'd have trouble finding the house. He opened the rear right door for her and then got in on the other side. What sort of rare perfume was she wearing, he almost asked, before he realized that it was the smell of soap.
Of course, he did not intend to take her to German House, although they could have eaten there without ration coupons. He opted instead for Repre, visited mainly by the few Czechs who could afford it (collaborators, he thought with a certain malicious glee, who'd bet on the wrong horse). He remembered the famous turn-of-the-century restaurant from his childhood, when he had eaten New Year's and Easter meals there with his real mother. Just after his return to Prague he had come here to jog his memories of her; it had still made him feel sentimental, but inside it had been empty and deserted as a burgled home.
But not now, not now. Beneath the restaurant's glowing chandeliers, he led the girl in the long black skirt and white blouse to their reserved table, and the tension that had gripped him since morning blossomed into a feeling he had not had in months: joy, so strong it caught at his throat. He was grateful when the headwaiter—who could hold up both ends of a conversation—stepped in. The girl had no special requests, so he recommended the Vienna sliced sirloin tips for both of them. However, she flatly refused Buback's ration coupons and pulled out her own.
The ritual seemed doubly absurd in a fancy establishment: the head-waiter pulled scissors from the tail of his frock-coat and cut off squares representing decagrams of meat, flour, and fat. Buback squirmed at how much smaller the Czech rations were than his. Either it seemed natural to her or too awkward to mention; she carefully placed the remaining tickets into separate compartments in her plastic purse, clasped her hands on the table, and turned her great brown eyes on his with an unspoken question.
"Gnadiges Fraulein," he then said, "I took the liberty of looking into your father's case; I'm interested in the well-being of the Czech police, since we're cooperating so closely. I can assure you that his only punishment will be a fine and that hell soon be released. However, to be completely honest with you, I could not prevent them from.... They didn't exactly handle him with kid gloves, I regret to say. What's important is that nothing more will happen to him."
"My father is strong," she said simply.
"Anyway," he added, as if to excuse Hinterpichler's idea, "now no one will suspect him of buying his way out with a relatively mild punishment."
"No one in our town would ever think that."
He admired that directness in her; it did not strike him as haughty. When she was sure of something, she expressed it in the simplest possible way. This too he had only ever experienced with Hilde.
"Thank you, Herr Oberkriminalrat," she added.
He took a step toward intimacy.
"Do you think you could forget about that title?"
She flashed him a heartfelt smile.
"Thank you, Herr Buback."
"Erwin...."
She nodded.
"I know."
He did not insist and tried instead to draw her gently into a conversation that might bring them closer. In decent German she told him about her family and her youth—as she said with her still childlike lisp—in a land where several languages met; her description matched the one he had heard two days earlier as they drove through that very countryside.
"So you're from the same area as Mr. Morava?"
"Yes ...," she answered more shyly than usual. "In peacetime we would undoubtedly have met a long time ago at socials; the war saw to it that we only met here, in Prague. He even speaks the same way; there's a lot of Slovak in our dialect."
For a couple of seconds he weighed addressing her now in Czech, so her speech could leave its narrow channel of foreign words and fill in his picture of her personality. Immediately he rejected the idea. He was acting like a college student smitten by a first crush!
The food interrupted Buback, letting him marvel at her long fingers holding the silverware with an unusual grace, at the small mouth, which barely moved as she ate; at the slight tilt of her head toward her left shoulder, causing her hair to cast an artful shadow on her right temple. Involuntarily he remembered Marleen Baumann's dramatic lines, arousing an anticipation of revolutionary acts, while this face radiated spiritual equilibrium, the sort that brings peace and happiness. I can't keep up this act for long, he realized; I'll end up telling her the truth.
And why not? Why not try it? What was he risking except a polite refusal? Wouldn't he lose far more if he let this opportunity slide by? Why not transform intent into action?
I don't know how it happened, my dear young lady; I know it goes against all the rules of this age, but in spite of it I love you. I've loved only once in my life, but my feelings were all the stronger for it; I loved my wife until the moment she died, and afterward as well—I thought that a love like that left no room for another. Then I saw you and from that moment I've known that her death made my love for you even deeper and stronger. I truly believe that she's sent you to me, and I implore you: overcome the revulsion you feel for me, a German. Hear me out, as a man who has never knowingly harmed another and who has tried amid the madness to maintain an island of justice. As proof I'll put an end to this charade by speaking to you in your native language, which is mine as well. What do you say?
He must have been staring silently at her with such intentness that she finally asked, "Is something wrong?"
The question tore him from his musings. Confusion filled her eyes. He had no idea how long his reverie had lasted. In the meantime, she had finished eating. He placed his silver on his half-full plate and tried to gain time for a good-faith effort.
"I'm sorry.... Would you like some dessert?"
She looked him straight in the eye again when she answered.
"No, thank you. It was very kind of you to invite me for such a nice dinner with such good news, but it's late already. My fiance would worry."
“Did you say who it was?" Morava interrupted her tensely. She shook her head. "That was enough; he called the waiter over immediately."
He forced himself to laugh.
"I guess everyone falls in love with you."
"Jan!"
He wanted to hug her, but for once she would not let him. He saw that Buback was still uppermost in her mind, and it irritated him.
"You served it to him straight up, and in spite of that he still drove you right home, kissed your hand, and said good night, everything as it should be; why let it eat at you?"
"What if he leaves my dad in jail... ?"
"He's not the extortionist type. No, I think your father's coming home."
"I don't know why I told him," she continued to fret. "He'll find out it's you in no time."
"So? Fortunatel
y that's not a capital offense yet."
"He could harm you some other way."