The Cowards

by Josef Skvorecky

  ‘What the hell are they doing in there?’ said Benno.

  ‘What time is it?’ asked Haryk.

  ‘Nearly three. Those guys’ll be gabbing away in there until morning.’

  I was trembling all over from the cold. I tried to think about shooting again but it didn’t work. I was so cold my teeth were chattering.

  ‘What’s wrong with you?’ said Benno.

  ‘I’m cold.’

  ‘You see, you jerk. You could already be home in bed by now.’

  ‘Yeah, sure.’

  The longer we sat there the worse I felt. I tried to warm up by thinking about Irena, but that didn’t help much. The lightbulb in the ceiling looked as cold as ice and Dr Bohadlo didn’t return. The minutes dragged by. At last Dr Bohadlo appeared. He came out looking very grave, his full-moon face still spattered with mud, and he told us to go to the lounge.

  ‘When are you going to let us go home?’ said Benno.

  ‘I’ve already told you – only when things have quieted down. You’re in the army now. Go and get some rest,’ said Dr Bohadlo testily. We got up. Dr Bohadlo disappeared through another door.

  ‘A great army,’ said Benno.

  ‘A great screw-up, that’s for sure,’ said Haryk.

  ‘You coming?’ said one of the other guys.

  ‘Sure. You go on ahead. We’ll be down in a while,’ said Benno. They headed off for the lounge. Benno turned to us. ‘Well, you want to stay here?’

  ‘No,’ said Haryk.

  ‘How about you?’ Benno turned to me.

  ‘I’m for clearing out.’

  ‘Okay. But how?’

  ‘Come on, you guys. I know a place we can get over that fence in no time,’ said Haryk. I opened the door. A bunch of guys were still standing under the lantern, arguing.

  ‘Careful. Follow me,’ said Haryk. We crept out, slipped quickly along the wall on the other side of the door and turned the corner. We found ourselves in complete darkness.

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘Here,’ I said.

  ‘Hold on.’

  I groped around until I felt Haryk’s hand. Benno laid his hand on my shoulder. Slowly we picked our way through the darkness. It was still pouring and dark as the inside of your hat. Haryk stopped and let go of my hand.

  ‘Well, here’s the fence,’ he said.

  ‘Where does it bring us out?’ said Benno.

  ‘On the Bucina road.’

  ‘I’ll never make it over.’

  ‘We’ll boost you. Danny, come here.’

  I stood next to Haryk.

  ‘Come on, Benno.’

  Benno stepped up to the fence. It was an ordinary board fence.

  ‘Grab hold at the top and stick out your ass. We’ll help you,’ said Haryk.

  ‘All right,’ said Benno. Haryk and I caught hold of his rear and boosted him up. He was awfully heavy. He started grunting and groaning.

  ‘You got a hold up there?’ asked Haryk.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Can we let go yet?’

  ‘Wait, not yet.’ You could hear him wheezing and I could feel him frantically pulling himself up. Finally he started growing a bit lighter. It felt like most of him anyway was already over the fence.

  ‘Okay,’ he said and we let go and I heard his shoes banging against the fence and then his body landing with a thud on the other side.

  ‘You make it all right?’ asked Haryk.

  ‘Yeah. All banged up,’ said Benno from behind the fence.

  ‘Can you get up?’

  ‘Yeah. To hell with everything.’

  ‘Okay, Danny. Your turn,’ said Haryk. I swung myself up on the fence and Haryk helped push. I got one leg over, then the other and sat on top. You couldn’t see a thing beyond the fence.

  ‘Where are you, Benno?’

  ‘Here.’ His voice came from right underneath me.

  ‘Get out of the way so I don’t land on top of you.’

  I could hear branches cracking as Benno moved off to one side. Then I jumped. I landed on my hands and feet on the sopping wet ground.

  ‘Okay?’ Haryk called out from the other side.

  ‘Yeah. You can jump,’ I said and got up. Haryk jumped down behind me. We came out on the highway.

  ‘Well, let’s go,’ said Benno. We hurried past the brewery. When we got near the gate we made a detour to keep out of the lantern light. The soldier was still patrolling behind the gate. We crossed the bridge and went past the County Office Building. All the windows were dark. Benno stopped at the corner.

  ‘Well, so long.’

  ‘See you,’ said Haryk

  ‘Good night,’ I said.

  ‘You coming over to our place this afternoon, aren’t you?’

  ‘We’ll be there,’ I said.

  ‘Well, good night.’

  ‘Good night.’

  Haryk and I walked through the park and under the railroad underpass. It was wet and dark all around. We came out of the underpass and around the Hotel Granada on Jirasek Boulevard. We stopped in front of our building.

  ‘See you at Benno’s tomorrow?’ I asked.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Well … good night.’

  ‘Good night,’ said Haryk, and vanished. I could hear his footsteps getting farther and farther away and then I unlocked the door. Then there I was in the hall and suddenly it was warm and dry. I shut the door and started shivering. I hurried up the stairs. It was dark at our place. I opened the door and closed it quietly behind me so as not to wake Mother. But I woke her up anyway or else she hadn’t been asleep at all. A light went on in the bedroom and she rushed into the hall in her nightgown.

  ‘Danny! Thank heavens! Are you all right?’

  ‘Don’t worry. I’m fine,’ I said.

  ‘What was all that shooting then? I’ve been so worried and frightened that something had happened to you!’

  ‘It was some kind of incident at the station. It’s all over now.’

  ‘And they’ve let you go now?’

  ‘No. But I caught cold so I came home.’

  ‘A good idea. Now you get right into bed. You’d like some tea?’

  ‘Please.’

  Mother went into the kitchen and I slipped into the bathroom to wash up a bit and also so I wouldn’t have to explain anything. She hadn’t seen anything there in the dark hall, but when she saw my clothes she’d be in for quite a shock. But she wouldn’t see them until morning. I stripped to the waist, washed, and rubbed myself dry with a Turkish towel. Then I went to my room, undressed, and crawled into bed. I was cold. Mother came in with a big mug of steaming hot tea and set it on the chair next to my bed.

  ‘Well, the main thing is you’re home again – thank God,’ she said.

  ‘Right. And tomorrow I’ll take a sweat cure and get rid of this cold.’

  ‘Of course. And we’ll ask Dr Labsky to write you a certificate so that you can’t go back there any more.’

  ‘Well, we’ll see,’ I said and picked up the mug of tea.

  ‘Yes … Would you like anything else? A sandwich or …’

  ‘No, thanks. Go back to bed, Mother.’

  ‘All right. Good night,’ she said, and leaned over me.

  ‘Good night,’ I said and screwed up my mouth. She kissed me.

  ‘And get a good long rest,’ she said, and went back to her bedroom. She closed the door behind her.

  I was alone in my room with the tea. I drank it and then crawled down under the eiderdown quilt and curled up. That same old, familiar, eternally recurring and always wonderful feeling swept over me. I closed my eyes and started saying my prayers. Dear Lord, help me to win Irena. Our Father Which art in heaven, hallowed be Thy Name, Thy kingdom come, and I thought about Irena and could see her the way she’d looked up in the mountains, edging her way across a narrow traverse near the Chimney and moving slowly around the overhanging rock towards the big crevasse, her arms bare and tan up to her shoulders and the safety rope between he
r breasts and Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us now and at the moment of our death, Amen, and Irena still sitting there in the sunshine and I said, Dear God, help me to win Irena, and I crossed myself and started thinking about her up there on the mountain again and then about the brewery and how they were all locked up inside it like in a zoo behind bars, and about the bars, and about the explosions down at the station, and that hot, black, wet tank and us getting over that fence and then suddenly I was thinking of Prague where they were probably really fighting now and the barricades were blazing in the streets and the Germans were probably murdering people and raping pretty girls, girls like Irena, or maybe somewhere a girl, the girl I’d finally meet some day and marry, was going through hell right then, and then it astonished me, the thought that I probably hadn’t even met the girl I would marry some day but that she must be living somewhere or that maybe she hadn’t even been born yet, and that maybe I wouldn’t get married until I was old and my bride would be young, except that I didn’t believe I’d live to be very old, and suddenly I had a terrific desire to know her and I wondered what she was like and whether or not she really existed at all and I said to myself, that’s all a lot of nonsense, I’ll never meet one, and then I remembered I was supposed to be in love with Irena, but then there I was back again thinking about her again, that girl I was going to meet, and I tried to imagine how she looked but I couldn’t, and all I knew was that she’d be pretty and I decided I could never love a girl who wasn’t pretty and wondered how anybody ever could but then for a second that made me feel sort of ignoble, that all I thought about was physical beauty and not spiritual beauty, but I said to myself, skip the spirit, I don’t believe in the spirit, I just believe in the body and only pretty ones at that and in all the pleasure you get out of looking and touching and I imagined myself embracing this girl I was going to meet and we were in bed together, both of us naked, and I was touching her breasts and kissing her and I went on dreaming it out in detail and then I felt worse than ever because it all wasn’t real, and for a while I thought about Dr Bohadlo and about Irena and about that guy I’d kicked in the stomach and about the communists and that, maybe, instead of just waiting around, the thing to do was to get out and do something. But why? And then back came the girl and I whispered I love you, I love you, and saw her in a pretty dress in Prague at the university and beside the river on a fall evening; so I went on and hardly knew any more quite what it was I was thinking about and what was real and what wasn’t until I fell asleep with all these pleasant thoughts, without even knowing how.

  Monday, May 7, 1945

  I woke up drenched with sweat from head to foot. It was already one o’clock. I lay there with the covers drawn up to my chin, my chest and neck cool from a draught seeping in under the blankets. Still, it was good I was sweating like that. I called Mother and asked her to bring me a towel. She brought two plus a fresh pair of pyjamas.

  ‘Should I call the doctor?’ she asked.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘It’s just an ordinary cold.’

  ‘Would you like some tea?’

  ‘Yes. And some lunch, too, if it’s ready.’

  Mother went out to the kitchen and I tossed off the covers and got out of my sweaty pyjamas and rubbed myself down with a towel. I could feel the blood pulsing through my veins. I put on the clean pyjamas, turned the quilt over and plumped it up, straightened the pillows, and climbed back into bed again. Then I rubbed my face and hair with the towel. I felt like I’d just had a bath. Mother brought lunch in on a tray and set it down in front of me. I finished it all off in no time and drank the tea. It warmed me up. Then I put the tray down next to the bed, crawled under the covers again, and closed my eyes. I felt fine. But then I started remembering again and the feeling started to fade. I remembered what had happened the night before, the explosion at the station, the whole thing, and wondered why they’d done it, what they got out of it, why they couldn’t wait like everybody else until it all blew over, whether it was for glory or what, and for the life of me I couldn’t see why and all it did was spoil that comfy feeling I had there in bed, so I switched over to thinking about Irena like I always did when I wanted to feel good, about all those evenings she’d left me feeling good, bad, or indifferent, though when I thought of her now it was only the good feelings that came to mind. I closed my eyes, listened to the clock tick, and thought about Irena, how once, the winter before, I’d gone with her from Stare Mesto by train and we’d sat there together in the dim compartment and I’d put my arm around her waist and told her I loved her and she’d pushed me away and started saying, as usual, that we were just good friends. I was back in my element then and went right on thinking about her. It seemed to me that my whole life was made up of only Irena and Vera and Eva and Jarinka, of what I’d had with them, and of nothing else really. And other people’s lives were exactly the same. I thought about the other guys and was pretty sure that all they ever thought about was girls and that girls were all they talked about, too. Girls, and music. Yes. Music and girls. That was life. Music was great and, whether I was thinking about the past or about what the future would bring, it was always connected with either music or girls. Like, once we were rehearsing at the Lion Inn and the girls were sitting around a table, looking at us, and I sat there hunched over my saxophone and I could see Vera had her eye on me and I knew that with my sax to my lips and with that whole complicated array of valves working away under my fingertips I must look pretty terrific, and that made me feel good. And then there was that big graduation dance in 1940. It was in the big ballroom at the Lion. The chandeliers, high up, were all lit and the girls dressed up in their tulle evening gowns and then I got up in a white dinner jacket and played my fine, tender solo in ‘I’ve Got a Guy’ or that wild solo in ‘Liza Likes Nobody’ and I never felt so great in my whole life. Nobody feels better than when he’s playing. I got up and Mr Flux turned the spotlight on me and there I stood, all in white, with my sideburns and glistening saxophone and Irena was down there in the darkened ballroom watching. That’s the way it was with music. Something wonderful, maybe even more wonderful than girls, except wherever there’s music, there’re girls, too. It was all part of the same piece of happiness, it was life, maybe the best thing about life there was, and when I thought of the future, I could see notes in front of me on a music stand and a band up on the stage and me with a golden saxophone and beautiful girls wearing low-cut gowns and a lost look in their eyes from the music and smiles on their lips when I looked their way and I could see myself out on my evening stroll through Prague and all those big, fancy, blasé houses and apartments and they were part of it, too, part of my jazz, and of life, and suddenly that kind of life scared me even though it looked as if that’s just the way mine would turn out – full of jazz and girls, pretty, beautiful, sweet, gaudy girls I could look at as long as I lived, which probably wouldn’t be very long, and then I thought about the others, about Fonda who wanted to be an architect and the only reason I could think of for him wanting to be an architect was that he could make a pile of money that way and live in a swanky house outside of Prague, because why else would a guy like Fonda want to be an architect? But that was life. Jazz and the girls and the memories. It couldn’t be any other way, I thought. Because they were all that was worth living for. That business of working at the factory, of getting up at five in the morning and coming home at eight at night sure hadn’t been living. No. This was life. Just this. And I couldn’t help thinking how nice it would be if there was a God, and I thought to myself, too bad there isn’t, at least not the kind you learn about in Sunday school and it’s anybody’s guess what He’s really like and how it all began and maybe He’s like they say in Sunday school after all, but I couldn’t believe it and I couldn’t believe He’d damn me to hell even if that was the kind of God He was, because I’d lived a pretty decent life and I had the feeling I’d never been very bad though I’d been pretty fresh a few times maybe and let a few girls down pretty hard when they thou
ght I was serious and found out I wasn’t, and I thought about, when I was little, that kid called Vocenil who sat right behind me in grade school, how he always smelled of bread and about those games we used to play in Bucina, the slingshots we had and the castles we built out of sticks and stones and it was all wrapped in a sort of autumnal haze and it was all so long ago, and after that came the winter evenings and high school and then the band and electric lights in the Manes’ drawing room and the wine cellar at the Lion and the Port Arthur and the light on the sax and the trumpet and the way the moist reed tasted in my mouth and the swimming pool with girls in their bathing suits and it got all mixed up and swirled and danced all around me and I was in it, too, watching how I lived, and I couldn’t tell whether it was good or bad or why I was living at all, but lying there in bed it didn’t seem to matter, because I felt comfy and warm and that’s all that mattered to me. Those memories were enough for me, and daydreaming about the future. It was all so peculiar, I could hardly believe it myself, because I knew I was living in 1945 and that the biggest war of all time was just coming to an end, a war in which millions of people had been killed and millions more had been horribly wounded and had lived through hell in the mud and the hospitals and millions more had been tortured and killed by the Germans in concentration camps – I thought of all those deaths and wondered what life was about, what the point was, and it seemed to me it didn’t have any, unless maybe just thinking about girls and music, and I wondered if that was enough to live for, but nothing else came to mind so I left it at that and quickly started thinking about Irena again, about one walk we’d taken through the woods one night and how awfully inferior I’d felt when she started talking about Victor Hugo and Byron and I got Byron mixed up with Balzac and Balzac with Barbusse and I hadn’t read anything by any of them, and it seemed to me I was as dumb as ever and that what was really important was inventing new things and new medicines – obviously very important – but that even without them you could still get along but that without girls and music life wouldn’t be worth living, and so my thoughts cruised through my head until I fell asleep and when I woke up I saw it was already evening. Outside my window the sky was red and the windows of the other houses shone with the setting sun. It was spring and the end of the German Protectorate.