Republic Of Whores

by Josef Skvorecky

  “No, not at all.”

  “I can take it from here. It’s just a short way now.”

  She put her hand on the handle of the basket. A kittenish touching of fingers. “And you have to get back to your unit,” she said quietly.

  A warm finger continued to stroke the back of his hand.

  “Go now,” she said.

  “No, I won’t,” said the tank commander. “I won’t go back.”

  “You’ll get into trouble.”

  “No I won’t. And even if I did — getting in trouble for you would be worth it.”

  “Would it? And what if they put you in the guardhouse for getting back late?”

  “I’d be delighted to spend the night in prison for your sake.”

  She smiled mysteriously. It was not her normal smile, the one she used with enlisted men and officers alike. But then she turned her profile to him, melancholy, tender, inscrutable. “It’s a beautiful night,” she said. “But it will soon be autumn.”

  “Yes,” said Danny. “And we’ll be going back to civilian life.”

  “You must be looking forward to that.”

  “You know how it is — we’ve been here for two years —”

  “I’ve been here for four,” she said. Bitterly, he thought.

  “I guess it’s not much fun here, is it?”

  “You can see that for yourself.”

  “I can,” he said, and was silent again. It was probably better not to talk at all. She belonged in a silent film. With separate musical accompaniment. Her eyes, her mouth, the duet with the chestnut trees, that voice. The wonderful shadows of her thighs.…

  “Couldn’t the Comrade First Lieutenant arrange to be transferred to where life is more interesting?”

  “Where? All tank bases are just like this one.”

  “Sometimes they’re located in cities.”

  Her brow furrowed and she spoke so bitterly it took him aback. “My husband has to stay here.”

  “Why?”

  “He has to, that’s all,” she said, and again fell silent. Then she said, “If he ever wants them to promote him again, he has to stay here. You must know why, Comrade Tank Commander. You weren’t born yesterday.”

  “Yes, I know why.” He knew a lot of things. The kind of things they talked about at the secret sessions of the black-magic circle run by Dr. Sadař, on endlessly boring Sundays which were supposed to be devoted to the joys of the new pulsating life of this super-just, self-satisfied society. There were those, it seemed, who didn’t know these things, and it was certainly grave knowledge to have to carry around. But, he told himself, she’s certainly not one of those who don’t know. There was always a strong bond of rapport between those who knew. At that moment, it merely reinforced the other, more interesting rapport between them.

  But the overture heightens the pleasure of the first act. As they walked up Zephyr Hill, towards the tank shooting range and the new housing for officers, they could hear the roar of motors and the dry thud of the cannon, but so far the sound was muted, since it came from the other side of the hill. The Thirtieth had night firing-practice.

  The first lieutenant’s wife broke the silence again. “You’re a student, aren’t you?”

  “I was. Unfortunately not any longer.”

  “What did you study?”

  “Philosophy.”

  “So you have a doctorate, right?”

  Danny hesitated. The age when people flaunted their academic titles was over. But she belonged to the magic circle.

  “Well, yes, I do.”

  She sighed audibly. “Ah, you’re so lucky to have made it. I wanted to go to university too. I wanted to finish high school with a private instructor, but —”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  She shrugged her shoulders. “I got married.”

  “Did that make it impossible?”

  “You’re familiar with my husband, aren’t you?” Then she added quickly, “Everything is difficult here in Kobylec. Besides, I don’t have the head for it, and I had a child soon afterwards —” She tossed her head back. My rose of Sharon, said the tank commander to himself, what do you need to know anything for?

  “It’s not something to be concerned about,” he said.

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “Just what I said. Do you think knowing things can bring happiness?”

  “I don’t know. But it must be nice to know a lot.”

  “There are nicer things,” he assured her.

  “I don’t think there are,” she said. “What you know, no one can take away from you.”

  “There are other things that can’t be taken away from you.”

  “No there aren’t. Everything else can. You can lose everything.”

  They walked to the top of the hill and to their left, below them, the shooting range sloped away, dark in the grey-blackness of the night. Across it moved clusters of little lights and the big black shadows of the tanks. On the slope above the valley, the targets were blinking. The motors roared and phosphorescent tracer shells poured out of the cannon and machine-guns and flew in rapid arcs — which seemed slow, for all that — across the valley and towards the targets.

  They stopped, and Danny put the basket of plums on the ground. The shots were cracking and echoing below them, and black figures moved back and forth around the lights. Lizetka would turn her nose up at her, he thought, this ignorant woman with her age beginning to show, tied down with a kid and God knows what desires lurking in her little brain. But Lizetka wouldn’t be entirely right. Lizetka, you little bitch from Radlice. You may have a university education, but she’ll give me what you won’t. You can go to the devil, my dear; I don’t understand you anyway.

  A new salvo rose from the range below them and Danny looked into her black eyes. Tiny images of the floating tracer bullets swam across their moist, convex surfaces. You I can understand, he said to himself. You I understand, my rose, though that’s nothing special, everyone understands you. And the rumour about you is probably the straight goods.

  “My dear Comrade Tank Commander,” said the first lieutenant’s wife, as though to confirm the rumour, “what are we waiting for?”

  So he waited no longer.

  “Take me home, Jana,” he said. “I want to go home with you.”

  She took his head in her hands and kissed him. “I bet you do. You don’t have to tell me. This little soldier’s been here two whole years. Two whole years he’s been bored to death. And now he can kiss the wife of First Lieutenant Pinkas.”

  “Who is sweet and beautiful.”

  “Beautiful.” She frowned. No matter what she did, she looked good. “So beautiful that all the soldiers turn to look at her, and none of them believes she’s faithful to her first lieutenant.”

  Danny laughed.

  “Not even the tank commander, does he?”

  He shrugged. “He hopes,” he said, “that if she is, she’ll make an exception in his case.”

  “She won’t. Because she’s not a faithful wife. Not in the least.”

  He embraced her and she began to kiss him hungrily in the middle of the road. The night wind sighed, the motors roared from the shooting range, the tank tracks rattled, orders were shouted. Then she pulled away from him and said, “Come.”

  She walked quickly down the road in the moonlight, and he picked up the basket and strode breathlessly behind her. They turned off at a group of new apartments. She walked around one of the buildings and stopped at the door. A red flare arced into the sky. She unlocked the door and they went inside. When she’d locked the door behind them, he embraced her again. She kissed him hard and hungrily and said, “It won’t be long now.”

  Jana, said the tank commander to himself. An ordinary, frustrated, neglected officer’s wife — but what a woman! She’s sad. She’s sad, as most people are. Why not make her happy? Why not make myself happy? He was filled by the moment, the intoxicating night, the tanks, the end of his two years in the ar
my. Everything filled him to overflowing. He put it all out of his mind and followed her upstairs. On the third floor she unlocked a door and let him in.

  “Be quiet,” she whispered. “Little Honza’s asleep.”

  She led him to her marriage bed, which smelled of cleanness and fresh air. There were delicate white curtains on the window. When he was lying naked beside her under the covers, he said, “Janička, I —” but she put a hand over his mouth and said, “Don’t say anything. Just be quiet. And hold me tight. Don’t talk at all, just be here with me, my bad darling, you shouldn’t be doing this, oh no, because they’ll lock you up for it, and I’ll tell them you made me do it, because I’m a faithful wife and not a slut, but can I help it if everything is so — so — just wait, Daniel in the lion’s den, oh, how you’re going to regret this! But now be happy with me, be happy with me,” she babbled on and held him tightly to herself.

  This has to happen at the end of my hitch — at the bloody end. What a stupid, cruel joke! I’ve only got a month left. I could have been rolling about with her for two years, just as others must have, and instead I burned for Lizetka, that bitch from Radlice, that hypnotic piece of ice. Janinka. You don’t know what you have until you begin to lose it. When it’s almost over. That stupid law of life. Everything comes too late. Too late.

  He lay beside her, he lay with her, and outside the window the golden tracers arched through the sky and struck the burning targets, which were visible from the bed because they were on the opposite slope. And so they made love against the background of a fireworks display, while the tanks roared and snorted and clattered across the terrain with their heavy tracks chewing up the sod and Jana kissed him and ran her eager hands over his body. And all at once she gave an angry laugh and said, “Tanks! Tanks! You sweet, impudent foolish boy! Those stupid, idiotic tanks!”

  3

  A NIGHT IN THE GUARDHOUSE

  Private Bamza walked down the corridor of the guardhouse jangling a cluster of keys, banging on each of the cell doors and calling out as he went, “Piss parade, gentlemen. Piss parade.”

  Of all his duties as an assistant prisoner escort, he carried this one out most diligently. There was, however, a reason for his diligence. Thanks to the brilliant architectural design provided by the Austro-Hungarian builder, the part of the prison meant for the involuntary accommodation of detainees was separated by an enormous iron grille from the area containing facilities for the prison warden and guards. Regulations said (and they were strictly observed because of frequent spot-checks) that the grille was to remain locked day and night, and at night the individual cell doors were to be locked as well. The problem was that the detainees’ toilets were located on the guards’ side of the grille. One of the assistant escort’s duties, regardless of the time of day or night, was to unlock first the cell door and then the grille for any detainee who wished to relieve himself, so it wasn’t surprising that Bamza, otherwise a slacker, was conscientious in making sure that the prisoners used the facilities before retiring. Another reason for his extraordinary conscientiousness was the inscrutability of military fate, in which today’s escort might, as easily as not, become tomorrow’s prisoner.

  A clamorous, happy crowd burst out of the cell doors, holding their trousers up with their hands, their belts having been confiscated. Here and there a member of the mechanized infantry regiment, still shod in lace-up boots but minus the laces, shuffled along the hall, dragging his feet to keep his boots on. This company of detainees, deprived of all means of suicide by hanging, crowded noisily into the little room provided for the exercise of bodily functions. Those who couldn’t fit in rushed to the stairwell leading to the main entrance, extracted cigarettes from secret places in their uniforms, and cadged lights from the duty guard. Glad of this momentary relief from two hours of boredom, the guard shifted his automatic rifle from the regulation position against his stomach to the forbidden rest position on his back and, looking carefully over his shoulder, lit up too.

  The officer of the guards, a young lieutenant in basic training named Malina, walked up the stairs from the yard. In the moonlight pouring down the low red-brick façade of the building, his fleshy pink cheeks grew darker. Against all regulations, he had shown up without his cap. He walked down the corridor, pulled out a cigarette case, offered it round, and then accepted a light from Sandor Nagy, a soldier of gypsy nationality who was serving the twenty-third detention of his two-year stint in the army.

  Nagy struck up a conversation at once. “Well then, Comrade Lieutenant, how much longer you got to go?”

  “A couple of weeks,” said the lieutenant, and he laughed contentedly.

  “You lucky, Comrade Lieutenant,” sighed Nagy.

  The lieutenant wasn’t familiar with Nagy’s military career, and he said, “Aren’t you getting out in a couple of weeks too?”

  Sandor Nagy made a sour, hopeless expression, waved his hand dismissively, and said, “Yo, Maria, it’s a hell of a couple of weeks. Those sons of bitches make me eat extra time.”

  Several detainees gave surly, sarcastic laughs. “What did you do?” asked Malina.

  “Nothing,” said Nagy in a hurt, unhappy voice. “Buddy of mine write me a letter, say my wife cheating on me, so I go for a recce.”

  “Without a pass?”

  “All right, without a pass,” Nagy admitted. “You know how it is, Comrade Lieutenant. I am so jealous I have to take a look. I can’t wait until the Comrade Captain give me special pass.”

  “Did the recce take long?”

  “It sure did, Comrade Lieutenant,” said Nagy bitterly. “I come home and the wife, she not there. She go to the Erdessys’, my mother say. So I go to the Erdessys’ and when I arrive Uncle Kolman sit in the living room and my wife nowhere. I say: Uncle Kolman, where’s my wife? How should I know? he say. You should keep better eye on her, Sandor. The radio say you’re in the army to protect your wives and children. So protect her, dammit, and don’t bother me no more about it. That piss me off, and I’m so mad I punch my uncle in the teeth and he do the same to me. Then Istvan, my cousin, show up and light into me. So I show him some knuckle too and the teeth fly. Then Istvan start screaming and yelling and Lajoš and Ferenc, both my cousins too, they show up and start throwing punches and the four of them rearrange me so neat I end up in the hospital for a week. And that’s where the army catch up with me.”

  “And where was your wife?”

  “Don’t even ask, Comrade Lieutenant.” Sandor waved his hands again. “She with the other Erdessys, the ones who are my father’s sister-in-law’s cousin’s wife’s second nephew once removed.”

  Sandor spat across the small, concrete courtyard right into the centre of a round, mosaic-like portrait of an unrecognizable dignitary. The other prisoners laughed derisively again. Private Bamza emerged from the gloom of the corridor and rattled his keys.

  “Attention, gentlemen,” he said. “We’re in for some fun.”

  “Fun?” said a bored prisoner skeptically. He had a thick growth of stubble and was lounging on the steps.

  “I left Mitzinka’s cell door locked,” said Bamza. “Just listen and wait a minute.”

  Everyone fell silent, and in that silence they could hear one of the guards snoring in the service room, and the faint slap of playing-cards on a table. Standing orders were being broken right inside the guardhouse. Otherwise the silence was absolute, with the faintly audible hush of the Indian-summer evening in the background, disturbed by the creaking of a chair and the sound of metal-shod boots on the concrete floor. Tank Commander Danny Smiřický — on duty as a prisoner escort — appeared in the doorway of the command room. His belt was loose and the weight of his service revolver, in its scuffed holster, had pulled it far below his waist. The unusual silence had roused him from the half-sleep he had fallen into as part of his duties.

  “What’s going on?” he asked when he saw the small circle of men listening closely at the door leading into the prison.

  �
�Quiet!” snapped Bamza. “We’re listening for Mitzi.”

  Danny didn’t understand, but he leaned obediently against the doorframe, put his hands in his pockets, and cocked one leg across the other. Suddenly the din of sharp blows on an iron door echoed through the building, as though an alarm had gone off. Bamza grinned knowingly but didn’t move. The blows echoed through the prison again and this time, through the dusky corridor, came the sound of a high but not unpleasant woman’s voice.

  “Hey, you greenhorns! Open up! Let me outa here!”

  Bamza’s face turned red from the effort of not laughing. Sandor Nagy slapped his thighs. The wailing female voice on the other side of the door kept on: “Open the door, boys! Come on! Open the goddamn door!”

  Bamza had to bite on a dirty khaki handkerchief to keep from laughing. The voice now began to threaten. “You sons of bitches! I don’t care if you open up or not. But just remember, you’ll have to clean up the mess yourselves.”

  “Open her door,” said Lieutenant Malina in a worried voice.

  “I’m going to count to twenty, and if the door isn’t open by then, get yourselves a bucket and some rags, you turkeys, because you’re going to need them.”

  In response to Malina’s order, Bamza slowly got to his feet. Nagy held him back.

  “Wait, Comrade Lieutenant,” he whispered. “I’ve got an idea. Boys, come here.”

  The detainees gathered around him. In a feverish whisper that Danny couldn’t hear, he explained his plan. Then Nagy’s voice, full of suppressed laughter, rose and the tank commander could pick out the words “and I’ll give the order.”

  The snickering group of detainees crowded into the corridor. Behind the cell door, a voice was already counting. The detainees formed two lines, one on either side of the corridor, then Private Bamza marched down between them, rattling the keys. The voice had already counted to twenty and was beginning to issue another ultimatum when Bamza unlocked the cell door, bowed deeply, and said, “At your service, madame.”