by Jirí Weil
From that time on, Pokorny was not trusted at the magazine. Even his shots of animals didn’t seem safe. Slowly but surely Pokorny withdrew, into semi-illegality. Occasionally he’d send a girl he knew to the office and identify her as his secretary. He took fewer photographs, only enough to stay inconspicuous and to keep from being conscripted to the Reich, for he had other, more important work to do. He had become an expert at making false documents. At first glance, the system of control over the inhabitants of the land devised by its present masters seemed ingenious and truly foolproof. Every person was required to have an ID card – the Kennkarte, as it was called. You also needed a Residence Card, as well as working papers. If you moved, you had to get a cancellation certificate for your former residence. Without this cancellation you couldn’t move to a new place.
But you had only to break one link of this chain and everything fell apart. You could buy the Residence Card blank at any news-stand, fill it out, and then have it stamped with a false stamp. Once you had this false Residence Card you could, with a little nerve, obtain a real cancellation certificate and then, through perfectly normal channels, get a real Residence Card for a new place of residence. You could get Kennkartes in various ways – for instance, by saying that you had lost yours and applying for a new one or by not turning in a Kennkarte of someone who had died. Blank Kennkartes were the most valuable of all. It was relatively easy to get working papers from Czech officials at the Employment Bureau. Consequently, what was usually falsified was the stamp.
Jan Krulis knew nothing about Pokorny’s various activities. He knew him only as a photographer, having bought pictures of various preserved landmarks from him. Once Pokorny had procured some coffee for him; he probably had contacts with black marketeers. It was difficult to ask a person he knew only superficially to help him get food, but Jan had exhausted all other possibilities. Under martial law the German and Protectorate bureaus had sealed off the silenced city from all sides and strengthened their checkpoints at the railway stations. Troopers with automatics guarded the exits from the city. And nobody wanted to sell their ration cards.
He rang the doorbell for a long time before Pokorny answered. Perhaps he was waiting for a different visitor. At first they just made small talk and Krulis couldn’t find a way to get to his subject. Pokorny seemed to be trying to get rid of him. The studio smelled of chemicals. It was actually used as a darkroom, with an enlarger and trays with developing fluids. They chatted for a while, then there was silence. The pauses grew longer.
Finally Pokorny eased the awkwardness by bringing out a metal box and carefully counting out coffee beans. He took down a coffee mill from a shelf and concentrated on grinding.
Coffee, real coffee at a time like this – it was almost too much hospitality. Pokorny turned the handle of the mill energetically but without a word, as if he were performing a ceremony. There was nothing for Jan to do but look around the room. Suddenly his gaze fell on the corner of something poking out from under a pile of papers. Surely that could be nothing but a Kennkarte. But why was it lying there, as if someone had quickly covered it up with papers but hadn’t had time to hide it completely? Ordinarily, people kept their Kennkarte in their pocket, for ready access. Or else they’d leave it out on a table to have at hand in case of an unexpected inspection. But to throw papers over it as if to hide it – that was strange. Perhaps it didn’t mean anything, perhaps it was a complete coincidence. But he kept having an odd feeling about Pokorny, partly because of his awkward embarrassment, his long silences, and also his strange behaviour when he opened the door. A name kept running through Jan’s head, and suddenly it came to the surface: ‘the Comet’! When people in his organisation needed false papers, they always said, ‘You have to wait for the Comet to arrange it.’ It could have been a person or a group. In an organisation with many branches, everybody knew only a few other people, and nobody asked questions about anyone else. But now it appeared that he had unexpectedly come upon a member. He glanced over at Pokorny, who was still concentrating on grinding the coffee, and their eyes met. Pokorny seemed to sense something, because he looked at him uncertainly. He stopped grinding and the atmosphere grew unbearably tense. And that caused Jan almost unconsciously to say out loud the name that was running through his head: ‘The Comet.’ Quietly, as if to himself.
Pokorny started, and for a moment seemed filled with doubt and indecision. And then suddenly, as if at a given signal, they both began to laugh. The laughter broke the tension and cleared the air. Now Krulis spoke freely. The coffee smelled delicious. Its aroma overpowered the chemical smells. Everything was all right; now he could tell why he had come. He needed food, at least a little food, or a few food coupons.
He apologised for having come with such a trivial request. He would now look for other sources. He didn’t have to explain why he was apologising.
‘Don’t worry about it. And if by chance anybody stops you and asks what you were doing here, show him these photographs of the Hrzansky Palace. I’ll give you a bill, and keep a copy. But I don’t think it will be necessary. And I can get you some food, too, but nothing much – just sardines, Dutch cheese in a tin, Hungarian salami. I don’t have anything else.’
That’s some ‘nothing much’, thought Jan, such rare things as sardines, Dutch cheese and Hungarian salami, at a time like this.
‘I’d rather give you some lard or meat, but those are hard to find these days.’
They drank the coffee and smoked the cigarettes which Pokorny offered Krulis. They were American cigarettes, Chesterfields.
‘Thank you for everything,’ said Jan Krulis as he was leaving. ‘It will get to the right place.’
The story behind these delicacies was a strange, even unbelievable one. In a street that ran down a steep incline from the castle, the street named after a poet, there was a single modern house. It blended in somewhat with its surroundings; nevertheless, it contrasted sharply because of its new red paint and the doorbells without names at the wooden entrance. People with secret telephone numbers lived there, members of one of the Reich intelligence services, but only part of the time. The rest of the time they travelled to other countries with false papers. They travelled under various disguises – even as Dominican monks or Orthodox priests.
One of them, who bore the noble prefix ‘von’, had already earned a bad reputation during the First Republic. While serving as a temporary attaché at the German embassy then, he had organised meetings with some dishonest Agrarian Party politicians. Forced to leave when his activities were discovered, he didn’t return until after March 15. He voluntarily chose Prague as his main base. Now, under the Protectorate, he worked in the Balkans. He could have settled in Vienna, but he chose the city he had been kicked out of – perhaps to even the score somehow. Or perhaps he had come to love the city; this sometimes happens to adventurers who have no home of their own.
He avoided all public places. He had a feeling that he was surrounded by spies, not only from other countries, but even from other Reich services, who worked for the Reich Ministry or favourites of the Leader. They all fought and set traps for one another.
He needed a housekeeper who would clean his house and cook for him, not full time, but at irregular intervals and odd hours, because he never knew when he’d return from his travels and how long he would be in town. The housekeeper should not be too clever, so that she wouldn’t understand anything and wouldn’t meddle in anything. She mustn’t be a German – a German might be a plant from one of the other Reich services. He searched for such a housekeeper for a long time, and finally found one quite by chance. Back when he was still working as an attaché he had met a career diplomat, an Austrian baron who had enlisted as an officer of the Reich when Austria was occupied and had himself transferred to the German embassy. After March 15, the German embassy was abolished, but the baron stayed in town for several months longer. He had some business to complete. And also, one could eat and drink well in the Protectorate if one had
enough money and the right connections.
The former attaché ran into the baron in front of the German House. The baron was just coming out from dinner and couldn’t pretend he didn’t know him. They talked about various unimportant things, not a word about the front – it paid to watch one’s tongue. Officials wearing dress uniforms and monocles were everywhere to be seen, and the baron gave a little sneer. He didn’t like Prussians and their uniforms. Nor did he like the former attaché, who he knew was an agent and involved in various dark affairs, including murder. But he acted perfectly politely. When you live with wolves you have to behave nicely towards them. He talked only about special rations and parties at the Press Club, as if those were matters of the utmost importance.
The baron remembered that he knew of a housekeeper. She had cooked for him back in the days he had worked for the Austrian embassy. He recommended her highly. She was old and ugly. She was unlikely to attract a lover. She didn’t know how to read or write and spoke Czech badly because she came from the easternmost part of Slovakia. Some Czech state trooper had brought her to Prague a long time ago and then abandoned her there. But she was a great cook.
And so the agent found a new housekeeper at last. She didn’t have much work to do, since her master was constantly on the road, but whenever he returned she created veritable feasts for him. And she kept the apartment meticulously clean. When she emptied the wastepaper basket she had instructions to throw the various torn-up scraps of paper directly into the furnace. But she only threw the newspapers there. She removed the scraps of paper and took them elsewhere. Where she took them was her affair. She couldn’t read them herself, but she took them to someone who was able to decipher them.
The housekeeper lived well – there were plenty of provisions in the pantry. The agent with the prefix ‘von’ received special ration cards. But that wasn’t his main source. He brought salamis from Hungary, canned vegetables from Bulgaria, coffee from Turkey. The sardines were Portuguese. His servant stole them from Red Cross parcels for English prisoners of war, as she did cigarettes and chocolate. Because he was on the road all the time, the easily transportable small delicacies went on the road in other directions. That’s how it happened that Jan got two cans of sardines, a Dutch cheese in a tin and a piece of Hungarian salami for the Javureks, Adela and Greta.
FOURTEEN
WHEN RICHARD REISINGER left the warehouse in the centre of town to go home in the evening, he had to ride the tram a long way through the darkened streets. The faces of people coming home after a long and exhausting day’s work seemed green and corpselike. He had a haunted feeling as the tram crawled slowly ahead, clacking along and stopping at the stations.
The star sewn on his left breast, just above the heart, should have forced him to follow the regulations and stand on the outside platform, but he usually covered it with his briefcase, sat in the corner and dozed off. Indeed, half the car was sleeping. It was as if they were all riding through a lifeless city, disintegrating and silenced, where the only sound to be heard was the screeching and rattling of a tram going off to an unknown destination.
Still, he was glad he could sit in the corner and doze until the tram-car clambered up the hill to the stop near his house.
He had grown up in this neighbourhood. He owned a little house with a little hardware store, now closed and cleared out. The house was so small that it didn’t even have a yard. The wooden steps creaked as he went up to his apartment – a single room with a kitchen. He turned on the light – a bare light bulb – and then turned it off again immediately in order to open the window and air the room out. Then he drew the blackout shades again, put a pot on a small electric hotplate and waited for the water to boil. In the winter he had to use a small heating stove, but sometimes he was too tired even to make a fire. Then he’d eat a little, get in bed and read. He read a lot lately. Before the war he had hardly touched a book, buying only an occasional sports magazine and listening to the radio.
Books helped him slough off the ugliness and horror of his work. In the old days he used to like going to dances, hanging about with his friends and boxing. There was never much business in his shop. Customers went there mainly to pass the time of day; at the most they’d buy a few nails or a hook. Generally the neighbourhood was concerned with local problems: someone was born, someone died, someone else was taken to the hospital, a girl took poison because of an unhappy love affair. When one is young everything seems simpler. No need for soul-searching about what to do, no need to make plans, so long as a living could be eked out from the shop. Some day he might get married, but God knew when that might be. The store would hardly support two people. If they had children he’d take a job as a shop assistant in a larger store. But if his future wife had money, they could open a shop in another neighbourhood. Of course, he’d never marry a girl just for money. Then the Depression came, and the new chain stores took away a lot of customers. But if a person has only himself to support, if he lives modestly, if his only amusements are boxing, hanging round with his friends, playing soccer and going dancing occasionally at Deutsch’s, he can always scrape by.
The mobilisation came, in 1938, and like everyone else he was happy to go. Then came Munich. The Vlajka Fascists cropped up everywhere and wrote all sorts of abusive signs on his shopfront. The writing could be washed off, and the neighbours didn’t pay much attention to such foolishness, but in the end he lost his shop anyhow in accordance with the law regarding the confiscation of Jewish property. At first he wasn’t too upset by this either. He was strong and healthy. He’d always find work of some sort.
But after the occupation on March 15 the merry-go-round began. As it turned faster and faster, he found himself alone on it. No more friends, no more dances; the Boxing Club had been dissolved even earlier. And the rest of it was like a terrible dream, except that he was forced to live it. All that remained was the apartment he came home to every evening. But that wasn’t enough. The old way didn’t work any more – to take life as it comes and not worry too much about anything.
His group of friends broke up. Some of them were conscripted to the Reich, some of them were arrested, new friends were hard to come by. Things were better when he was working on the highways and in the quarries – there was a spirit of camaraderie among the labourers. Even at the Collection Agency everybody stuck together – there was no other way, though people with different occupations were thrown together there, each with problems of his own. The main problem was to avoid being called for the transports as long as possible.
He’d talk with the neighbours about the war and they’d tell anecdotes about the Führer, his marshals, ministers and Czech collaborators, about news from the General Headquarters claiming that the Reich armed forces in the East had succeeded in breaking away from the enemy and reducing the front. These conversations about good and bad news had two beliefs in common: that justice would prevail in the end and that the Fascist murderers would eventually be destroyed.
Reisinger had hardly any time for himself on weekdays. But Sunday belonged entirely to him. He had a day off on Sunday – the warehouse was closed.
When the weather was nice he’d stretch out on a hillside overlooking the city. He could see only factories and tall chimneys. Smoke poured out of them even on Sundays.
He knew that the transport lay ahead for him. He did not comfort himself, as many others did, with thoughts that the war would end in two months, that freedom would come, and that there was plenty of time for the people in the Central Bureau to accomplish their task. He did believe, however, as most people did, that the war would end, that the Russians would win and bring justice and peace. Sometimes he felt a wave of anger, and he had to control himself to keep from smashing Erich or Karel when they boasted about their devilish work. The trouble was that he’d enjoy only one satisfying moment. Then they would kill him.
One afternoon he decided to go for a walk. He was tired of the bare rubbish-strewn hillside, scorched by the sun and over-gr
azed by goats. He walked down the road that followed the river. Above it the hill was blooming with acacias. He felt as if he were out in the country, because there were trees here and the river was quiet on this Sunday afternoon. He didn’t feel like thinking about anything. He just wanted to look at the river, at the trees, at the garden of an isolated little house. He felt as if he were saying goodbye to something he might never see again.
His head was full of confused thoughts that kept cropping up as he kept trying to push them away.
Suddenly he bumped into someone. That could have meant real trouble if it was one of them. But they never came this way. He mumbled a few words of apology. Then the person caught him by the sleeve.
‘Are you so blinded by that sheriff’s star of yours that you don’t even recognise me?’
It was Franta, his friend from the Boxing Club. He used to work in the Rustonec factory.
‘So what are you doing now?’
‘I’m with the Gestapo.’
‘Come on, Richard, stop pulling my leg.’
Reisinger told him about his adventures. He was glad to have someone to confide in.
They talked for a few more minutes. Franta looked around.
‘There’s nobody here, but still, it’s better not to have long chats out in the open. I’ll tell you what. Next Sunday take off that star and come to the Sestak pub. We could go a few rounds. Everything’s the same as it used to be there.’