Republic Of Whores

by Josef Skvorecky

  “Janinka,” he said, “don’t be sad. The way it is now is just the way it should be. Now it’s really the way it should be.”

  “What’s the way it should be? That I don’t care about my husband any more? Is that the way it should be? That I don’t care about all the men who came before you, or about all the men who’ll come after you, is that how you want it? That I’ll miss you? More than I’ve ever missed anyone? Is that the way it should be, Danny?”

  “Come on.…”

  “I know,” she said. “I’m just another hysterical woman. A dumb officer’s wife who probably gets talked about a lot, right?”

  “But —”

  “No, no, don’t say anything. Keep your precious, beautiful, wicked mouth shut. I don’t want you to lie to me. I know it’s true, and you know it too.”

  “Janinka,” he said, shaken by his foolish passion, “I only know I love you. An awful lot. You mean more to me than anything else in the world. Run away with me, Janinka.”

  “Where to?” she said darkly. “To some dumb sublet in Prague? Before long you’d be gone in a cloud of dust — just so you wouldn’t always have to look at this poor, ignorant Mrs. Pinkasová —”

  “But Jan —”

  “— who loves you so badly and yet so little that she makes herself a burden to you.”

  Tears fell from the parachute tower towards the white sand below. Danny took out his handkerchief. He mumbled something.

  “So badly,” she said in a hopeless voice. “I love you so awfully awfully awfully badly, Danny. I don’t know what it is. I’m such a dull woman. Why do I love you so much? I — I’ve had five other tank commanders before you came along. Yes, it’s true, and my husband is an old tank man too, and everything’s so awfully, awfully, awfully.… Danny!”

  “Janinka, get a divorce,” he said, but he didn’t meant it, and he suddenly heard the fraudulence in his voice.

  “Don’t say that, Danny, please. Don’t say things like that,” she exploded in a tearful rage. “I love you, but I can’t do anything, I don’t have any skills, books don’t interest me — but I love you. Awfully. Oh Danny, don’t leave. Stay here with me.”

  “With you?” he said helplessly, and the idiotic idea came to him that she was suggesting he join the regular army. He stiffened.

  “Oh, you don’t understand,” she groaned. “You’re just a dumb, heartless guy, but I love you. I only said that so I wouldn’t have to keep saying I love you. Everything I say to you, every single word, means in my language I love you. Do you know that, Danny? Do you know that?”

  “I know,” he said.

  “No you don’t. You don’t know anything. You had to wait until Mrs. Pinkasová, that slut, that Jezebel, told you. You haven’t got a clue, you’re just a big dope, a goof, my darling. You have so much to learn, so much. But will anyone ever teach you? Will anyone ever teach you?”

  “What, Janinka?”

  “Oh —” she said. “I’d — like — I want — but no,” she said. She was sitting almost alone, lost above the camp, unhappy tears streaming down her cheeks. “No, it’s stupid. It’s idiotic. It’s dumb. No, I don’t want anything. Things are fine the way they are. Things are arranged in this completely stupid way and no one has any right to expect them to be different. It’s just the way things are. Come on, Danny,” she said, turning to him. “What are we doing sitting here? I can have these stars any time, but I won’t have you again. Come on.”

  She climbed down the rungs on the ladder, her skirt tight against her stomach and thighs, her white knees shining like the stars again. And perhaps that was an answer to everything, the only answer she knew how to give. An answer anyone could have given. He felt gauche and ignorant when he crawled down after her. When they got to the bottom, they went into the equipment shed, where it was dark and the exercise mats were piled up.

  * * *

  From then until the members of the Seventh Tank Battalion went back to civilian life, nothing special happened. The joy of this last and greatest event of their army careers completely overshadowed the enigma being investigated, so far unsuccessfully, by the military secret police. Major Borovička, better known as the Pygmy Devil, had mysteriously disappeared. He had never returned home from that final celebration, and the participants in the night’s events remained unpunished.

  In view of facts that came to light much later, one circumstance seems especially important. But the only witnesses to it were Tank Commander Smiřický and the wife of his superior officer, and Smiřický had long since vanished into civilian life, and the lieutenant’s wife kept her silence.

  When they had made love in the equipment shed and then walked back across the road to the mess hall, they heard a thud and a splash, and they saw a private — based on the words he spoke, the tank commander guessed that it was Private Bamza — sitting on the ground with his feet in some kind of hole.

  “Fucking hell!” said the private angrily. “Those bloody cooks! Someone could fall right into this shithole.”

  The tank commander and the officer’s wife retreated into the shadows. The soldier got up, picked up a board, and grumbled, “Fucking bastards left it open!” And then he covered the hole in the ground with the board.

  The hole was the opening of an enormous septic tank, into which all the sewers of the camp drained.

  * * *

  It was many days later — the feeling of liberation among the newly liberated soldiers had long since evaporated, and the officer’s wife had begun showing up at the battalion offices to appraise the new recruits with her sad eyes, and Dr. Daniel Smiřický was once again preoccupied with the small, meaningless details of life and had completely forgotten Janinka’s wise words — when a special vehicle showed up at the Seventh Tank Battalion’s septic-tank opening. The vehicle was known to inmates of the camp by the technical term “shit-sucker”. The driver removed the board from the septic-tank opening, manoeuvred the truck’s huge hose into the gaping hole, turned on the motor, then lit a cigarette and accepted a freshly fried wiener schnitzel from the friendly chef.

  The machine worked well at first, but suddenly there was a hollow sucking thump and the pump began to whine.

  “What did you put in the tank, boys?” said the driver, putting his half-eaten wiener schnitzel down on the fender of his truck. He stopped the motor and began extracting the hose. “Something’s clogged ’er up.”

  The cook came out to help, and together they pulled the heavy hose out of the septic tank. Sure enough, there was a black object stuck in the intake. When they pulled it out, they saw that it was an officer’s riding boot, of unusually small proportions.