The Cowards

by Josef Skvorecky

  ‘Goddamn it,’ he said. ‘I haven’t been dry all day. Or warm either.’ Then he started in on his story:

  ‘Well, then. It was in May, 1943, in Kolin. One night – one of those nice, warm May nights when all the stars look wet – I was hanging around down by the railroad station when suddenly I see this woman standing there in the shadows. There was a great big suitcase and she must have just set it down because she was still catching her breath. In that light all I could see was that she had a nice figure and I was practically on my way over to gallantly offer to help her when the size of that suitcase sobered me up a little. Before lugging a thing like that I thought I’d better take a good look, so I walked past her first to see what she looked like from the front. She was standing under a blackout street light that was enough to see she was a real beauty. She was a blonde but not a peroxide blonde – I could see that – and there was something kind of exotic or strange about her, so I didn’t care how big that suitcase was any more and I quickly sidled up towards her so nobody else’d try to beat me to it and politely asked if I could help her carry her suitcase. She looked at me suspiciously – I’ve never seen such obvious suspicion in a pair of eyes in my life – and then she said to me, ‘Versteh nicht Tschechisch.’ So then I knew she must be one of those Mädchen from the Luftwaffehilfefrauenfunkerschule or whatever they called it, and I noticed she was wearing one of those dull brown coats of theirs. But instead of putting me off, it made me even more interested, because her powdered face, with those big mistrustful eyes blossoming out of that shabby uniform, was really something. Something very special. So anyway, I repeated my offer in German and Trudy – a dumb name, but then so what, she was a real beauty – Trudy smiled and said thank you and I picked up that suitcase and for a minute there I was sorry I’d ever offered to carry it, but that feeling was gone again in no time.

  ‘ “Wohin?” I asked her, and she said to the Luftwaffehilfefrauenfunkerschule and the way she said that awful word was very lovely – clear and smooth and distinct, without the usual kind of Kraut splutter, an intelligent kind of radio-announcer German. I liked the way she walked along next to me and I tried hard not to tilt way over to one side, but that suitcase was awfully damn heavy. I don’t know what she had in it, maybe a transmitter or something; all I know is it weighed a ton. Then I asked her, “Sie sind eine Luftwaffehilfeirauenfunkerschülerin?” only I couldn’t pronounce it right and she laughed and said, “Jawohl …” and that was when I decided I’d make a pass at her.

  ‘I don’t know, maybe you’ll think it was pretty strange and wrong maybe – me trying to make time with a German girl while people were dying in concentration camps but, for one thing, how was I to know who was guilty and who wasn’t, and, for another thing, I’d never had anything to do with the Germans before, but this girl was a real beauty and besides what I had in mind was just to have her once and then off I’d go and in a certain way I guess you could say that was hurting the enemy too. I can talk about the whole thing casually and easy enough now, but when it was all actually happening it wasn’t like it sounds now. I didn’t even know she was German when I started talking to her, and then how could I leave her there at night with that suitcase once I’d offered to help her? Anyway, what the hell! There’s no sense in explaining it all to you anyway since it’s obvious I’m just trying to justify my behaviour and maybe show how dumb it is, too, to generalize and to get trapped by your own prejudices and irrational feelings.

  ‘So anyway, we talked as we walked along side by side. Trudy asked me about Kolin and I answered her as I puffed along swearing away inside at that damn suitcase and I thought, I’m going to get what’s coming to me, I’m not carrying this just for the fun of it. Of course that really wasn’t the real reason. Actually, like I said, the fact that this pretty girl beside me spoke a foreign language gave her a special kind of charm. A scholar would probably say that, in this case, language assumed a secondary erotic function, but no matter how you put it the fact was, that’s the way it was. And just when a beautiful silver moon came out from behind the clouds and most of those wet-looking little stars dimmed out, we got to the corner from where you could see the Luftwaffehilfefrauenfunkerschule and a Kraut was stomping back and forth in front of the gate in heavy boots with a bayonet and I stopped.

  ‘ “So,” I said, “dort ist die Luftwaffe … die Schule.” Trudy laughed, then batted her eyes at me and said, “Could you help me up to the door with my suitcase?” “Sure,” I said. “But first you’ve got to promise me something,” and I looked deep into her eyes. “Me?” she asked, a little puzzled, and I told her she’d first have to promise to see me again. You ought to have seen what happened then! All at once her pretty face hardened up and everything she’d been indoctrinated to believe woke up in her and she said it was unmöglich. “Why?” I asked her, and I tried to look into her eyes but couldn’t. She looked away and didn’t answer. “Warum?” I said again, and then she said, without even looking at me, “Schauen Sie, I’m grateful to you for helping me with the suitcase but it’s impossible, Sie verstehen doch.” “Ich versteh nicht,” I said, but she just shrugged her shoulders.

  ‘And then I said something to her I probably wouldn’t have dared say if I’d been in my right mind, and she reacted to it like a real Nazi. “Is’ es die Rasse?” I said ironically, and smiled because I thought she’d look at the race business the same way I did, just so much bullshit, and I thought the whole situation was sort of intriguing. I was naïve enough to believe she’d think all those race theories of theirs were just as dumb as I did. Besides, Czechs were officially classed as Aryans, too. So I asked her. “Is’ es die Rasse?” She turned to me and snapped, “Ja wenn Sie’s wissen wollen,” and snatched up her suitcase and spun half-way around under the weight of it, but then turned again and started off across the square towards that Kraut with the bayonet, dragging the suitcase over the ground more than really carrying it. “I’ll help you,” I said and tried to help her again. “Danke,” she said sharply and walked faster, but then so did I and I just had time to say, “Aber, Fräulein,” when something flashed a couple of yards ahead of us and I saw that it was that Kraut’s bayonet and there he stood, legs widespread, watching us. Without saying a word and hardly even breaking my stride, I veered off to the left and disappeared into the darkness without even looking back. But when I’d got far enough away to feel safe, I started thinking about it.

  ‘Dumb blonde, I thought to myself. So that kind of thing really exists. It really bothered her – me being so inferior – and I made up my mind I’d teach her a lesson. Maybe it sounds sort of strange, but I didn’t have the slightest doubt that I’d get her sooner or later. For me the main thing was she was a pretty girl and I figured that for her, too, maybe the fact I was a boy was more important than anything else. That whole scene that night, right up to when I made my big pitch, seemed to point that way anyway. As soon as I got back to my room this whole race question seemed to add some kind of spice to the affair and I was already looking forward to making a pass at her. I was a sophomore then and had plenty of time to play around. Plenty of time and lots of interest in that kind of thing. Before going to sleep that night I cooked up all sorts of plans like you always do just before falling asleep. And when I finally fell asleep I dreamed about her – crazy dreams, all mixed up.

  ‘The next afternoon I went and sat down in the park across from the airforcewomenassistantradioschool – a mouthful in any language. I was hoping she’d show up but I still didn’t have any clear plan of attack. I’d given up trying to plan things in detail a long time ago – back around my freshman year. I was so wet behind the ears even then that I always carried around a little black notebook in my back pocket, and whenever I fell in love with some girl I’d go out in the woods and write down a whole set of love dialogues and for each sentence I’d think up all sorts of answers. Then I’d memorize them instead of my Latin vocabulary or German history, which is probably why I flunked out that year. The trouble
was, though, whenever a girl was really there, I could hardly get my mouth open. About all I could get out was to ask her very solemnly if maybe she’d like to go to a movie, and if she said no, that was that, I was finished and all I could say was, too bad, and then I’d just stand there. Like I say, there was this period when I was awfully dumb and inexperienced, but I picked up experience as time went on, so by the time I was a junior I was pretty much of a Don Juan with plenty of small talk to see me through and my conditioned reflexes in such good shape that nothing and nobody could shut me up. So there I sat that afternoon and I wasn’t thinking about much in general – not of what I’d say to her in case she came by, anyway – just sort of daydreaming about her and looking forward to seeing her again.

  ‘And then around five o’clock she came. There she was in the dark doorway practically blinding me with that blonde hair of hers, and she was walking arm in arm with some ugly, dumpy, freckle-faced redheaded girl who made her look even greater by comparison. When she saw me, she put her nose in the air and pretended I wasn’t even there. I got up from the bench, stuck my hands in my pockets and sauntered off after them.

  ‘One thing, by the way – I really looked great. There wasn’t another zootsuiter in Kolin back in those days who could even touch me – except for Tom Hojer, naturally. Except the fact that Tom had the edge on me wasn’t so much his own doing as it was due to the fact that Mr Buml had a real feud on with Tom’s father. Mr Buml was trying to get even with Tom Hojer’s dad for something Tom Hojer’s dad had done to him, I guess, and what he did was to get an article about Tom Hojer published in the Aryan Struggle. He wrote in demanding to know how, at a time when everyone was being called upon to make a supreme effort for the victory of the Reich, the nation could tolerate individuals who did nothing but loaf around in the Kolin square wearing a so-called Tatra hat and swinging a cane and whistling American hit tunes and adding that some of these young loafers had even been heard singing “Lili Marlene” in English at the Beranek Café. Mr Buml considered singing “Lili Marlene” in English a particularly grave offence because it was such a purely German song and, to clear things up once and for all, he said he’d decided it was high time to publish the name of this shameful gang’s ringleader in Aryan Struggle. This ringleader’s name was Hojer, he was ostensibly a student, and to his cronies he was known as “Tom” Hojer. Well, naturally, Tom couldn’t have asked for any better publicity and there’s no getting around it – he knew how to make the most of it. What he did was he sued Mr Buml for libel and won. He got a statement signed by his doctor saying that he had a double fracture of his leg, so naturally he had to use a cane, and that the doctor had ordered him to take walks to exercise his leg. Then the head waiter at Beranek’s and a couple other guys committed perjury for him and swore that Tom had sung “Lili Marlene” in German, but in a Plattdeutsch dialect that Buml didn’t understand, and then Mr Buml really made a fool of himself when he tried to spout some German and it turned out that Plattdeutsch wasn’t all he didn’t know – he didn’t even know plain Deutsch. So Tom Hojer came out a hero and Mr Buml wound up as a first-class certified ass.

  ‘Anyhow, so there I was sauntering along behind Trudy and the fat one and I was wearing a great pair of shoes with thick white rubber soles and my pants were so tight I could almost feel them stretching. On went the girls with me right behind them. They stopped in front of shop windows and I was biding my time, waiting for the fat one to finally go into some store so I could talk to Trudy. But they just kept going along arm in arm and didn’t split up. Then all of a sudden, they turned and headed back towards me. Trudy frowned and looked stiff as a spinster when I said, “Guten Tag,” and sailed right past me without a word. That cooled me off a bit. I didn’t want to make a big scene. So I decided I’d better just take it in my stride and so I walked on a little and then turned, too. I tailed them for about half an hour. Every once in a while Trudy would look back, spot me, scowl, and then face front again. I had a bad scare once when two officers suddenly came out of a store – big guys, with Iron Crosses, spiffy uniforms, super-Teutons. They stopped to chat with the girls and Trudy turned and gave me such a dirty look I thought, oh, oh, she’s going to tell the officers, and I thought maybe I’d better take off fast. Nothing happened, though, and I was glad I hadn’t run away because that must have impressed her. In fact, I think that was probably the main reason she finally talked to me after all.

  ‘It was in front of the movie theatre. The two officers said good-bye to them, heiled Hitler, and clicked their heels. There was this big picture poster of Hans Albers in front of the theatre and I saw Trudy saying something to the fat one, who answered “Gut” and went into the lobby. As soon as she was gone, I headed straight over to Trudy, who spun around like she’d just been waiting for me to try. When I came up to her, before I could get a word out, she said, “Why are you following me?” in a funny tone of voice – not so much unfriendly as sort of sad or reproving. “Ich liebe Sie,” I said promptly, but she didn’t say a word. “Ich liebe Sie,” I went on. “I’m madly in love with you and think of you all the time.” And still she didn’t say anything. It was getting kind of embarrassing for me because my German wasn’t so great that it couldn’t get worse, especially when there was only this one thing to talk about. Then, just when I’d run out of words and had stopped talking too, she looked at me and spoke in that patient voice of hers, using the same clichés as the night before. “Schauen Sie,” she said, “es hat wirklich keinen Zweck. I believe you do really like me, but, really, there’s just no point.” I gave her a passionate look and stepped in closer and said, “Sagen Sie mir, ist es wirklich die Rasse? Only die Rasse? Nur die Nation?” but this time she didn’t react like a fanatic Nazi the way she had the night before and she answered calmly, “Ja,” and I said, “It’s that important?” Again she said, “Ja,” very short and sweet, looking at me patiently and sympathetically, as if she was sort of sorry for me. I took her hand and said – and it seemed to me it sounded better in German than in Czech, or maybe this time I really meant it – I said, or rather sighed, as they say in novels, “Ich muss Sie sehen! Ich muss Sie sprechen!” She jerked her hand away fast and looked around and in a quick whisper said, “Das ist unmöglich,” but I went right on. “Ich muss, ich muss, bitte, bitte, otherwise I’ll go mad.” She made a face and all of a sudden her eyes didn’t look so sure any more; she kept on glancing around nervously and again, but even quieter this time, she said, “Nein, es geht nicht, wirklich nicht,” which fired me up again and after I’d panted out a few more of those urgent bitte, bitte’s all at once she said, “Gut, ich komme, but only once, we’ve got to get this cleared up.” Then she glanced around again. The fat one was coming back now so she said quickly, “At the corner, tomorrow night at eight!” Then she turned around and called to her friend, “Also, hast du’s?” and they linked arms. I knew which corner she meant.

  ‘I just stood there and watched them and I felt wonderful, that kind of conquering feeling you always get when a girl says she’ll go out with you, when a girl you’ve made up your mind you really want to make says yes. It’s always the same feeling and what comes of it all depends on how things turn out. And I admit I didn’t have any idea how that date was going to turn out, a bad jolt to a guy’s self-confidence. But that wasn’t the only jolt, since that wasn’t so serious. It was all my ideas about people and about the world that got knocked around, too. I mean, so once more I’d seen that basically everybody’s pretty much the same. All right. But on the other hand, what do they do? They fall for something so dumb they let themselves be pushed around, they let their lives get so screwed up that, well, that a guy with feelings and ideas like mine simply couldn’t believe it if he hadn’t seen it for himself.

  ‘I waited at the corner for her. It was one of those starry nights again but pretty windy so the streets were nearly deserted. She appeared in the gate with typical German punctuality and the Kraut with the bayonet saluted, an unofficial flirt salute,
I guess, because he grinned at her and she grinned back at him and then walked straight towards me, putting on her gloves as she came. I stayed put. I didn’t go out to meet her because I was pretty well hidden in the shadows and figured, with that Kraut around, maybe she wouldn’t like me racing out to pick her up, letting everybody know I had a date with her. So I stood there waiting in the shadows, and when she got there I took off my hat and said, “Guten Abend,” and she nodded and said, “Na kommen Sie,” and stuck her hands in her coat pockets without even stopping and kept right on going. This sort of threw me off balance, but I put my hat back on and caught up with her. So there we were, walking along side by side. “Where’re we going?” I asked, and when she said it was all the same to her I suggested the island. She said, “Na gut,” and I was glad because there’s no place like the island for the kind of thing I had in mind. And now – though I may have had my doubts before – I was absolutely convinced she’d have to not just surrender but completely capitulate. Then suddenly it struck me that I hadn’t introduced myself yet and neither had she so I told her my name and naturally she absolutely couldn’t get it straight so I had to repeat it three times. Then she told me hers was Trudy Krause. It probably sounds pretty awful to you, and there’s no getting around it, it is one hell of a name. But that’s only because German is such an awful language. If the Germans were all as dried up and full of belches as their names and language are they’d really be in sad shape. But this Trudy, she really made up for her horrible name and – objectively speaking and putting all prejudice aside – she was every bit as pretty as Deanna Durbin, for instance. As far as feminine beauty went, she had the very same quality. She was a woman, even though she was a Nazi. What’s more, she was a German woman and I just couldn’t believe, then anyway, that this could make her all that different from other girls, and from me. Instead, it seemed to me that her being a bit different only added to the fun, that being a foreigner she had an exotic charm, and even to this day I don’t believe a German’s really all that different or that this difference had to get in our way. I believe it didn’t have to, but I also know it did.