The Cowards

by Josef Skvorecky

  ‘Well?’ he said. ‘This is it,’ I could hardly believe my own ears, but he really said it. ‘This is it.’ Probably it had popped up in his head from all those novels he’d consumed during the war when he’d worked in the municipal library. I looked at Benda. He was crushed. He stood there with his pants stretched tight over his big rump, in that funny-looking fireman’s helmet with a silver seam down the middle. I felt sorry for him. I watched him and I would have helped him if I could. I thought about staging a mutiny. But it was just a thought. We had guns in our hands and they didn’t have anything. We could easily have got out of there. But I put it out of my head right away. It’d be all over in a couple days and then they’d try us for sedition and we’d get sent to jail on account of it for God knows how long. There wasn’t anything we could do. Slowly, Benda took off the string of hand grenades and laid them down on the table in front of the janitor. Then he took off the gun strapped over his shoulders and placed it on top of the grenades.

  ‘Good. I see you’ve understood what your duty is,’ said Major Weiss. ‘And don’t think we don’t know what we’re doing. These weapons will be distributed among experienced trained soldiers.’

  Benda stepped back. I took his place in front of the janitor. Cautiously, Major Weiss picked up Benda’s submachine gun.

  ‘Write this down, sergeant,’ he said to the janitor. ‘One light machine gun, donated by Mr – what’s your name?’

  ‘Submachine gun,’ I said quickly and casually.

  ‘What?’ said Major Weiss.

  ‘That’s a submachine gun.’

  I’d taken him by surprise. He was off balance now. He looked at me in embarrassment and his face flushed a little around his nose.

  ‘It’s a submachine gun, not a light machine gun,’ I repeated obligingly.

  ‘Yes. I know, Mr Smiricky. You don’t need to instruct me,’ he said brusquely, to cover up.

  ‘I thought maybe you didn’t know,’ I said. I was capable of all kinds of insolence at that moment. Major Weiss turned pale with anger, but he was smart enough not to go on any further. He turned to the janitor and continued. ‘Have you got that? One submachine gun, donated by Mr – what’s your name?’

  ‘Benda,’ Benda said.

  ‘Mr Benda.’

  The janitor wrote it down. When he wrote submachine gun you could see how his pen hesitated. It was probably the first time he’d ever heard the word.

  ‘Also six hand grenades,’ Major Weiss went on. The lieutenant took the grenades and Benda’s submachine gun and put them aside. I laid my own submachine gun down on the table in front of the janitor and pulled the ammunition out of my pockets. I felt a bit like a thief, but then the whole thing was a farce anyway. And that’s how we were disarmed. And we hadn’t even fired a shot. It was a real farce. I felt a bit sad about giving up my gun, but at least I’d have a snapshot of it. That would be enough. And so I was out of it. Out of the army. And out of the uprising. And nobody could say I didn’t have guts. And I’d be able to show Irena my picture. And I wasn’t going to get mixed up in anything else. Let somebody else get mixed up. I’d done my part. Yesterday they’d practically put me in front of a firing squad and now today this business with our guns. I’d certainly done my part. Now Mr Moutelik and Mr Machacek could play at being heroes. I’d just sit by and watch. I stepped away from the table and stood next to Benda. Vahar moved in front of the janitor and put down his flag and staff.

  ‘One Czechoslovak flag,’ Major Weiss dictated. ‘Donated by Mr –?’

  ‘Vahar,’ said Vahar, and stepped back to join us.

  Then all the rest of the boys stepped up to the janitor’s table, one after another. The lieutenant, his collar unbuttoned, checked the weapons and carried them over to the wall. You could tell from the way he picked up our submachine guns that it was the first time he’d ever laid his hands on one. Benda watched sadly. I watched with interest. When they were through with us, Major Weiss said, ‘Thank you. That’s all. Now report to the office.’ He spoke briskly and officially because he was mad at us. Especially at me. Well, I’d shown him up. I turned around and went out. The first thing I saw was Berty Moutelik with his camera. He stood there with his camera up to his eye taking a picture of four gentlemen who were posing for him. I knew them all. They were from the Commercial Bank and they’d already been inducted because they had on red-and-white armbands with some kind of gold inscription. When I got closer, I could read it. CS ARMY stood out like the letters on a ribbon on a funeral wreath. I noticed that there were already a lot of groups standing around in the yard with armbands on. We went on towards the main building. I saw the boys from the band standing over by the icehouse. I left the others and went over to them.

  ‘Hi,’ I said. They turned to me.

  ‘Hi,’ said Haryk. Benno was wearing his sheepskin cap. He wore it pulled down low over his eyes and he looked a small-town hick. Benno was always good for a laugh. Day before yesterday he’d talked as if he was scared, but he hadn’t lost his sense of humour. I remember him playing a hurdy-gurdy at a carnival once and the peasants, who didn’t know who he was, threw money into his cap. We walked by him, too, and Haryk threw him a ten-crown note and Benno thanked him respectfully. He gave the guy who’d loaned him the hurdy-gurdy a thousand crowns for letting him use it half a day. But he could afford it. His dad’s shop was doing good business.

  ‘You’re looking sharp, Benno,’ I said.

  ‘Hail to our homeland,’ said Benno.

  ‘All hail!’ said Haryk.

  ‘So you’re in already?’ I said, because I saw they were all wearing those mourning bands on their arms.

  ‘You bet. Answering our country’s call,’ said Lexa.

  ‘I’m going to get in line.’

  ‘Go on, then come back here. We’ll make up an exemplary body of fighting men.’

  I laughed and went up to the door and took my place in line. Hrob, a red-headed kid I’d known in grade school, was just ahead of me. He looked at me with those great big eyes of his.

  ‘Hello,’ he said in a respectful voice.

  ‘Hello,’ I answered, very friendly. Hrob had mild blue eyes. I remembered him – how he’d excelled in two things in school. He’d been absolutely incapable of learning the multiplication tables so he’d dropped out of school in fourth grade, but he was always so quiet and mild that the teacher had a hard time before finally deciding to flunk him. He really didn’t excel so much in the second thing. It just brought him fame. That was one time in second grade, I guess, when we were still just little kids and we used to have peeing contests in the john at recess. Who could sprinkle the wall most. Ponykl won. He got all the way up to the strip of black tar paint and made a gorgeous palm tree on the wall. Hrob just watched us, but then all of a sudden he smiled, unbuttoned his fly, took out his little peter, bowed, and then a fine yellowish stream spurted out like a fountain and gradually went higher and higher up the wall. But still not as high as Ponykl’s. Hrob leaned back a little bit more and he shouldn’t have done that because the yellow stream dropped back from the wall and before the poor kid could duck, it fell back on his head, obeying the law of gravitation. The kids razzed him about it for the rest of his school career. Now there he stood in front of me, looking at me with those big, docile, respectful blue eyes. He had on a neat blue suit made of reject material by which you could always recognize the workers from Lewith’s weaving mill on Sunday.

  ‘You going to enlist too?’ I said to him.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Me, too,’ I said, and that was all.

  Hrob said nothing. He never talked much. We stood there mutely and the line moved slowly into the building. We got into the hall and shuffled forward. The others who’d been through already came out, pulling on their armbands. Another guy in uniform stood by the office door with a fixed bayonet and whenever someone came out, he let in another one. The line was quiet. Nobody shoved. I was already nearly up to the door. They let Hrob go in and I stayed
outside. The soldier with the bayonet was kidding around with some guy behind me. Then the door opened, Hrob emerged with a glowing face, reverently clutching his armband. I went in. Mr Kuratko sat at the desk wearing a captain’s uniform and with a big ledger opened up in front of him. Four paper flags – Czechoslovak, Soviet, American, and British – stood on his desk in a little vase. There was no water in it. On one side of Captain Kuratko sat old Cemelik with colonel’s stars on his epaulets and on the other side was Mr Manes with a blue armband with red trim and the inscription, NATIONAL COMMITTEE, in gold letters. Around a little table in the corner sat Dr Sabata, Mr Kaldoun, Mayor Prudivy, and Krocan the factory owner. So it wasn’t Mr Kaldoun who’d hauled in the flag, I realized. All of them were wearing those blue armbands with the red trim. The men behind the desk were watching me.

  ‘Good morning,’ I said, but Mr Manes and old Cemelik acted as if they didn’t recognize me. They were acting very grim, like men at war. There they all sat, staging an uprising. People were pushing and shoving to get in and lay down their lives for their country while these men, in their own way, were doing their bit for their country, too. Mr Kaldoun, Mr Krocan, Dr Sabata. They’d all got along pretty well with the Germans. Now they were running a revolution. Nobody could find any fault with them. Everybody was mobilized. Everybody had to obey. So everything was fine. And Colonel Cemelik was giving the orders.

  ‘Name?’ Captain Kuratko asked me.

  ‘Daniel Smiricky.’

  Mr Kuratko wrote my name down in the first column of his ledger and put a number in front of it. Then he went on.

  ‘Occupation?’

  ‘Student.’

  ‘Date of birth?’

  ‘Twenty-seventh of September, 1924.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘In Kostelec’

  ‘Kostelec County. Address?’

  ‘Kostelec.’

  ‘Street?’

  ‘123 Jirasek.’

  ‘Religion?’

  ‘Roman Catholic’

  ‘Inducted?’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘Have you been inducted?

  ‘No.’

  ‘Has not done his military service.’

  Mr Kuratko wrote a long sentence in his ledger, then took a mimeographed sheet of paper from a pile beside him, wrote something on it and handed it to me.

  ‘Read this and sign it.’

  It read: ‘I, Daniel Smiricky,’ which Mr Kuratko had written in by hand, ‘pledge on my honour and conscience that I will loyally obey all orders given by the local commander of the Czechoslovak Army in Kostelec and that I am ready if necessary to lay down my life for my country, the Czechoslovak Republic. Kostelec, – May, 1945.’ I took a pen, wrote in the date, May 6th, and signed my name. Mr Kuratko gave the sheet of paper to Mr Manes and he put it into a file in front of him. Then Mr Kuratko shook hands with me.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said.

  ‘You’re quite welcome,’ I said. Then old Cemelik shook hands with me, and Mr Manes, too. He gave me a red-and-white armband from the basket beside the table. The basket was full of them.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said and turned around. I opened the door and the soldier was already shoving somebody else inside. So now I was a private in the Czechoslovak Army. Now I belonged to the revolutionaries. I pulled on the armband and felt it looked silly. But nobody was looking at me any differently than usual. So this was an uprising. I went out of the building. The brewery yard was swarming with people. They were standing around in clusters, wearing all kinds of coats and jackets and raincoats, and they had knapsacks on their backs. They were smoking and talking. They looked more like a hiking club getting ready for an outing. But they were an army. These were revolutionaries. There wasn’t much you could do about it. Colonel Cemelik was at the head of the army and the supreme commander was Dr Sabata. It was an army. And I was in it.

  I went down the stairs and looked for the boys. It had started raining again. Coat collars were turned up in the courtyard and people ducked into various doorways and sheds. But a lot of them still stood out in the yard. I buttoned my jacket up to my neck. Hell, why hadn’t I worn a raincoat? I headed across the yard towards the icehouse. I didn’t see the boys there but I heard the signal. We’d used that signal for as long as I can remember. It had caught on in town; even kids who didn’t have anything to do with the band used it. I looked around. The rain started pouring down on the worn cobblestone pavement that led to the stable. People stood pressed up against the sides of the buildings. I heard the signal again and looked around to see where it came from. I saw Benno’s red face under his sheepskin cap and Haryk in his green raincoat. They were standing under a woodshed over by the fence. I hurried over to them.

  ‘Greetings, brother,’ Haryk said to me.

  ‘Greetings. Let me under,’ I said and crept in under the roof. It was dark and chilly and there were lots of other people in there, but you could hardly make them out in the dark. I stood between Benno and Haryk and looked out at the rain. It swept in sheets over the pavement and the fine chilly mist cooled my face. It felt good, standing there in the dark shed looking out at the rain.

  ‘All actions cancelled because of the weather,’ said Benno.

  ‘In its first attempt to seize the offensive, the First Army Company got its feet wet,’ said Haryk.

  ‘The offensive was repelled by Colonel Cemelik’s unexpected attack of rheumatism,’ said Benno.

  ‘Shut up,’ said Fonda from inside the shed. The boys stopped. I turned around and all I could make out in the darkness were a lot of pale faces and eyes. There was a little hole in the back wall of the shed that let in some light. We didn’t say anything for a while. More people rushed over to the shed and pushed inside. But there was still plenty of room. By now all I could see was a patch of the courtyard over the dark heads of the people in front of me. Colonel Cemelik, wearing a green cape, walked across that little patch; the water trickled off his cap and down his face but he went on valiantly, taking his time. When he disappeared, the space was empty again. I leaned out and saw there was hardly anything left of the line now, just a handful of people up by the door. They must have been soaked to the skin by now. Then Cemelik appeared again and behind him came Hrob, his face glowing with enthusiasm, carrying a load of rifles on his back.

  ‘Hey, look, reinforcements,’ said Haryk. Cemelik, with Hrob at his heels, disappeared into the main building. The rain kept on falling. The revolution was called off. Couldn’t go on in a downpour like this. I could just imagine how glad this rain must have made Dr Sabata feel. Sound the retreat and then there goes the army into a shed. Above the brewery the sky was white and grey with rain.

  ‘Danny, is that you?’ I heard behind me. It was Rosta. I recognized his voice immediately.

  ‘Yeah, where are you?’

  ‘Here. Come on and sit down.’

  I turned, but it was too dark to see. Somebody switched on a flashlight. The cone of light travelled over the ground. A pile of small logs was stacked up in the back of the shed. Some people were sitting on them, but there was still room. The flashlight gleamed from the top of the pile. Behind it I could see Rosta’s face.

  ‘Okay,’ I said and started to scramble up over the logs. It wasn’t easy, but I made it. I sat down beside Rosta. The logs were rough so you could feel them on your behind, but it was better to sit down than stand up.

  The rain was falling steadily on the roof of the shed, making an awful racket. We sat there high up in the dark on a pile of wood, and now I couldn’t see into the yard at all. All I could see were the dark silhouettes of people standing at the edge of the shed and the milky gloomy light beyond. I was overcome by a feeling of security. The drumming of the rain on the roof awoke all sorts of recollections. About the Giant Mountains and Ledecsky Rocks, about a shed like this one, only that one was for hay, at Ledec. And how I sat there that time with Irena and Zdenek and black clouds were scudding low and crooked across the sky, but there was st
ill a narrow strip of blue sky at the horizon and the rays of the sun came through that strip of blue and shone on the tops of the rocks. And there in that strip of blue, birch trees swayed in the wind and a dead man was hanging from one of them and Irena screamed and clung to Zdenek. It was dark in that shed and I felt lonely and rejected and there were those black clouds and the light disappeared behind them and the rain streamed down over the cliffs. Irena’s teeth were chattering and she clung to Zdenek and I crawled out of the shed and stood under the leaking eaves. Rain dripped on me as I stood out there looking down into the valley at the gilded tops of the cliffs and at the rainbow bulging above them and at the birch trees and at the dead man hanging there and at the dark pine woods in the rain, and behind me in the cabin was Irena with Zdenek and I was all alone and alone and alone.

  It was dark inside the shed and suddenly warm and then suddenly cool again. It was very nice and we sat on the damp logs and for a while said nothing.

  ‘Listen,’ said Rosta.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Aren’t you fed up with this?’

  ‘I’ll say.’

  ‘Me, too.’

  ‘You look tired.’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘Why? What’d you do yesterday?’

  ‘We had a binge up at the cabin.’

  ‘With Honza?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘And some girls?’

  ‘Naturally.’

  I didn’t say anything. I knew Rosta pretty well and I knew what was on his mind.

  ‘How’s it going with Dagmar?’ I asked.

  ‘Don’t ask me.’

  ‘She still giving you a hard time?’

  ‘I’ll say.’

  ‘And you’re still crazy about her?’

  ‘I sure am. How’s it going with you?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘With Irena?’