‘Up yours,’ said Benno.
‘You’re talking like a top sergeant already,’ said Haryk.
‘What’s wrong? Aren’t you happy, Benno?’ said Lexa. ‘Fonda, go tell your old man to give Benno some private lessons in how to be a soldier.’
‘Up that, too,’ said Benno.
‘You know, your old man’s really not very bright, Fonda,’ said Haryk.
‘Maybe not. But this farce isn’t his fault,’ said Fonda.
‘Like hell it isn’t. He thought this whole thing up.’
‘Sure,’ said Lexa. ‘And when we finally attack, old Cemelik’s going to send us back and make us do it all over in step the next time.’ He turned to Benno. ‘Hey, Benno, got anything to eat?’
‘Food!’ cried Benno. ‘Food! The best idea I’ve heard all morning!’ He reached over for his jacket and started taking little packages out of the pockets. We got out our supplies, too, and started in. Our mood picked up, Suddenly Fonda started tapping his feet and humming and after a while he gave out with some scat. Fonda was a great scat singer. He sat there, his skinny body jerking as he sang through his nose, just sounds, no words. Haryk and Benno joined in, Benno like a trumpet, Haryk like a clarinet in the high registers, and then Fonda came in like a trombone. They scatted on into ‘Drop Down Mama Blues’ and as I sat there listening, I started feeling good. Guys around us turned to listen, too. The sun shone down as hot as ever, and we sat in that checkerboard slope of shadow and light and the blues echoed against the icehouse wall and when the boys had finished the final chorus, I started up in English, singing ‘Woman I’m Loving’ and the boys picked it up but stayed down soft and easy. ‘One tooth solid gold’, I sang, and when I got through with that verse, the boys broke out with a gorgeous dissonance that swelled to fortissimo and Fonda gave out with a great big glissando and then they faded off and I went on, ‘dat’s de only woman,’ while they plucked staccato chords and I let my voice go down to a hoarse sob for ‘a mortgage on my soul,’ and then I joined in like I would on my tenor sax and we went on like that, drifting from one piece to another for at least a quarter of an hour. A circle formed around us, guys sitting there gaping at us and tapping their feet, their eyes full of wonder. Their eyes always looked that way when they heard jazz, like when they were sitting around a table at the Lion behind a glass of pink lemonade, listening reverently as we played ‘Chinatown’ and Brynych took over on his drums for an ear-shattering beautiful solo or when we played in our overalls at the Messerschmidt cafeteria at noon and I could feel their eyes on me when I played Coleman Hawkins’s solo from ‘Sweet Lorraine’. They were staring at us now with the same sort of eyes you saw when you told them the incredible fact that ‘Big Noise from Winnetka’ was nothing but drums and bass for one whole side, and this wonder in their eyes made me feel great and I loved them for it and figured they must be all right after all if they loved jazz so much, and that they’d run things differently than Mr Krocan who owned the factory or Mr Machan or Mr Petrbok, the band leader with his simpleminded merry-go-round music, and maybe their world was going to be a great world, full of jazz, and just generally a great place to live in. We sat there on the grass and were just blasting our way into ‘Darktown Strutters’ Ball’ when men with armbands on their sleeves came around the side of the icehouse and started calling up the patrols. We stopped singing. Our good mood faded fast.
‘Why the hell can’t they just leave us alone?’ said Benno, but just then we heard Dr Bohadlo’s piping voice, ‘Dr Bohadlo’s patrol, over here!’ and you could see his chubby little hand signalling above his waterproof jacket.
‘Screw him,’ said Benno, and didn’t move.
‘Come on, Benno. Don’t try anything stupid now,’ I said. I figured it’d be good to get away from the brewery for a while.
‘I’m not moving an inch. First they drill you to death and then you’re still supposed to drag yourself all around town.’
‘Yeah, but once you’re outside it’s easier to take off,’ I said.
‘A bright idea. And the next thing you know old Cemelik’s stringing you up for desertion.’
‘Well, they’ll do it right now if you don’t get up pretty soon,’ I said. ‘For refusing to obey orders.’
‘Bullshit,’ said Benno.
The field in front of us was slowly emptying. I watched the centipedes marching off. Dr Bohadlo stood there in his knickers peering around expectantly. He looked just as rosy and complacent as he had on Sunday.
‘Ah, there you are,’ he called out when he saw us and his voice was full of patriotic enthusiasm. ‘All right, lads, come on, come on! We’ve got to be going!’
‘I’ll murder him,’ said Benno quietly, but he got up. We dusted ourselves off and went over to Dr Bohadlo.
‘All right, come on,’ he said. ‘I hope you won’t run out on me again like last time,’ he said jokingly. I grinned.
‘Are we going around the town again?’ said Benno.
‘That’s right,’ nodded Dr Bohadlo.
‘Three hours again?’
‘That’s right, Mr Manes. Three hours. This is the army. All right. Line up, boys, so we can be on our way. It’s already quarter past.’
I looked at my watch. It was quarter past two. We lined up.
‘So long, guys,’ I said to Lexa and Pedro who were marching at the rear of the last centipede.
‘So long,’ said Lexa.
‘For the good of our country!’ said Pedro.
‘Forward, march,’ said Dr Bohadlo, flinging out his chubby little legs, and once again we started off on that crazy circuit around the town. We turned the corner and plunged on towards the gate. A bunch of guys were leaning against the iron fence by the gate, looking out. When we got closer, I saw they were arguing excitedly with a crowd that had gathered on the other side. The guards at the gate had been reinforced and they were arguing in two directions at once – with guys inside who wanted out and with people on the outside who wanted in.
‘What’s going on?’ I asked.
‘I don’t know,’ said Haryk. ‘What’s going on?’ he yelled at a guy running from the gate towards the main building.
‘The Russians are coming!’ the guy yelled.
‘Jesus!’ said Haryk.
‘Well, I guess that takes care of our revolution,’ said Benno ‘Are we going on patrol, Doctor?’
Dr Bohadlo looked bewildered. ‘Well, I don’t know,’ he said. ‘The matter wasn’t discussed at headquarters.’
‘Well, let’s skip it then. The whole thing doesn’t make any sense, anyway,’ said Benno.
‘He’s got something there,’ said Haryk. ‘Let’s go out and welcome the Russians.’
‘I don’t know, boys. Wait here, I’ll … oh, Major!’ shouted Dr Bohadlo, and he ran up to Major Weiss who was striding from the gate looking grave and important. He wore a tricolour badge on his cap and the buttons on his uniform shone in the sunshine. He stopped when he heard Dr Bohadlo calling, bent over to hear what he had to say, but meanwhile kept looking around. He looked preoccupied. Dr Bohadlo was telling him something and Weiss was listening and then he turned towards him sharply and shook his head. You could see him saying, ‘No! Under no circumstances!’ Dr Bohadlo bowed courteously, then remembered himself, stuck out his chest, touched his fingers to his hiking cap, then turned and came back to us as red as a lobster.
‘Well, boys, we’ve got to go out on patrol.’
‘Aw, but that’s silly,’ said Benno.
‘No. No, Mr Manes. This is a matter of law and order.’
‘But what’s the point of patrolling if the Russians are coming?’
‘Orders are orders, Mr Manes. We’re in the army.’
‘Fine. But orders aren’t supposed to be stupid,’ said Benno in disgust.
‘It’s a soldier’s duty to obey orders,’ said Dr Bohadlo, and then he addressed the rest of us, ‘Let’s go, boys.’
Benno grumbled. ‘Sure. Maul halten und weiter dienen,’ h
e said in an undertone. Dr Bohadlo flung out his leg again and we moved towards the gate.
‘This is crazy,’ said Benno. ‘This is first-class lunacy.’
‘It sure is,’ I said, and looked around. Four soldiers on guard duty at the gate were fighting off a bunch of women trying to push their way in. Most of them were old women in babushkas and they were waving red flags and screaming, ‘Let us in!’ ‘Our husbands are in there!’ ‘The Russians are coming!’ ‘Long live the Red Army!’ I saw the back of one of the soldiers in green khaki. Holding his rifle horizontally in front of him, he was shoving the women back. A lieutenant was standing behind the soldiers. When I looked closer, I saw it was Baron Rozkosny whose prep school diploma had cost his parents a house which they’d built for the chairman of the examinations board. There he stood, an elegant little revolver in his hand, behind his men. We stopped by the gate and Rozkosny noticed us. ‘Make way for the patrol!’ he shouted, waving his revolver under the old women’s noses. They went on cursing the guards but moved back. The soldiers made a corridor for us and our centipede jolted forward and passed through.
‘Look at ’em, playing soldiers!’ screamed one old lady.
‘Well, they won’t be playing much longer!’
I looked at Dr Bohadlo’s back. No reaction. We turned down towards the bridge, trudging along in step. On the other side of the bridge we suddenly found ourselves caught up in a swarming throng of people. Flags were flying from the houses and buildings facing the station again, lots of flags. They looked fresh and bright in the sun. Our centipede was swallowed up in the crowd. The crowd was streaming past the station, heading for the German border to the east. A parade of old men and women was forming up at the corner of the Lewith Mills. They were holding a banner made out of red cloth with some kind of Russian inscription on it. I spelled it out: LONG LIVE THE RED ARMY. Some of them were carrying red flags, some Czech flags, and children kept tearing back and forth on the sidewalk. Dark masses of people poured in from the factory section, all headed east towards the border. And we were marching along the main street, due west. It was slow going because we were going against the confused current of women pushing baby carriages and trying to carry children, too, little boys, Italians who’d suddenly started singing for joy, Russian refugees in their torn green clothes, guys in shirtsleeves and kids in knickers or short pants. Well, well, I said to myself, so it’s only the élite who signed up at the brewery. The élite of the town’s prize fools. And these guys here, they’d probably been hiding out in their cellars just waiting for this, for the Russians to come, and now they’d come out to welcome them while we had to march around on patrol and as we marched on I had this feeling that I was striding through Bombay or Rangoon, a member of His Majesty’s colonial troops, and the next minute I was living the part – tight-lipped, pith-helmeted, marching through a mob, our revolvers in their holsters, our carbines in our hands – called in to put down some native uprising and, goddamn it, maybe that was all our army was called up for, too. The crowds made way for us and on we went and the tropical sun hung high above us, baking our faces. Then I saw Berty on a bike, a Leica hanging around his neck, riding off towards the border, peddling like mad in his short pants, his face eager with greed. The feeling of being in Rangoon popped. Photographs by kind permission of Mr B Moutelik, Jr. ‘Our Liberators’, the caption would be in the Illustrated History of the Kostelec Revolution under a picture of some triumphantly gesturing Russians. Flags flapped from the windows above us and people kept hanging out more and more and suddenly I noticed that there were an awful lot of Russian ones, particularly at the Kaldouns’s where the long red-and-white noodle had hung on Saturday. Now there was an even longer red one. At Pittermans’s, just like Rosta had said there would be, an immense violet flag flapped against the wall with a yellow star in the middle. It looked like something out of a circus. A Soviet flag also hung in front of the Krocans’s house and in each window they’d stuck a pair of little paper Czech and Russian flags. The Russian flags looked new and homemade. I looked around – the town was ablaze with red flags. At the Jiraseks’s, at the Mlejniks’s, at the Burinohas’s, at the Novotonys’s, at the Novaks’s, at the Wenigs’s and as we went on, I saw more at the Mouteliks’s, the Rydls’s, the Sejnohas’s – everywhere. Thousands of them. A car steered towards us across the square. Its windows were decorated as if for a wedding and the radiator covered with garlands. Mr Vipler, a municipal employee, was hanging out a big WE WELCOME YOU! banner above the loan association floor. The whole gipsy encampment in the square was going crazy, dancing around between the piles of knapsacks and bundles. In front of the Lion Hotel you could see the gleaming instruments of the local brass band. That intrigued me. I looked closer and saw Mr Petrobok, its leader, with his white admiral’s cap and his baton topped with the golden ball, lining up his musicians while, behind, a parade was forming with flags and banners. The sun beat down on the chaos in the square. Somebody started to ring the church bells and through all the noise and singing and din of voices, the two big bells – Gabriel and Michael – tolled out as if sounding an alarm
‘Well, if this isn’t the dumbest thing I ever heard of,’ said Benno, and he stopped. Swinging along at a good clip, I tramped on his heels.
‘Go on, go on,’ I said.
‘Boy, are we ever a bunch of idiots,’ said Benno, and he plodded on. We crossed the square over to Sokol Hall. Another parade was forming up there. Sokol members in folk costume. Men and women. There weren’t very many of them, but the ones up front were carrying a heavy flag with lots of ribbons dangling from it. Mr Sumec’s brass band was behind them and flags everywhere. The band started to play. It sounded sour and tinny. The Sokol members set off, the men stepping along majestically behind their pot bellies, the Sokol women in berets, then a straggle of kids and people in ordinary clothes. We headed down past Pozner’s factory. The crowd had begun to thin out. It looked as if these parades had been lining up and setting off for hours, so that by now the head of the procession must already be at the border. There were hardly any people left in this part of town, just a few old grand-dads sitting on doorsteps, watching us in amazement, and grannies on footstools. We’d marched through town in tight formation; now we spread out over the empty streets on the western side. We’d come to the edge of town, to the lawn in front of Serpon’s factory. The sun was still blazing away at us.
‘Dr Bohadlo?’ Benno said.
‘Yes?’ said Dr Bohadlo without stopping.
‘Couldn’t we take a little break here? We’re all pretty tired out after that drill this morning,’ said Benno.
‘Yeah,’ I said.
‘We sure are,’ said Haryk.
Dr Bohadlo stopped and looked at his watch. ‘Well,’ he said. ‘I suppose we might be able to work in a fifteen minute break here.’
Without another word Benno flopped down on the grass and we sat down beside him, facing out to the east. The sky was blue and a couple of thin white clouds stretched off from over the town towards Germany. The cherry trees glowed in the bright sun. There was no wind and from the centre of town all you could hear was a vague buzz. We sat there, staring off at the distant wooded hills between which the German border ran. I stretched out on the grass and looked up at the sky. Behind me loomed the big white Serpon factory, built like a Scottish fortress. It was a silent factory now. But I couldn’t look straight up. The sun was right overhead. The closer I tried to look at it, the more it looked like a huge, shapeless, molten blotch, incandescent and melting into the blue sky around it, turning the whole sky to white lava. And, looking up at the sun and with the big white building looming behind me and in that stillness which was like the quiet in a country where the people have all died, I felt very far away and an awful feeling of futility spread into every pore and cell of my body and everything, everything except me, myself, seemed worlds away. I myself was a snail inside the hard shell of that futility and very comfortable in there even though I couldn’t feel anything a
nd was all alone, and I’d just started to inch out of it when my soft vulnerable body came up against something that hurt. There I was, just coming out, and there was Irena and the hurt of not having her and the hurt of not knowing whether I really wanted her and the hurt of wanting her and of being jealous of her and the hurt of not really caring and the hurt of knowing I’d never have her and of knowing that everything was and always would be futile – those evenings and all those words and this revolution which wouldn’t help me out with her at all, those pictures with me holding that submachine gun, and that clash by night with the gang of communists, and the triumphant celebration when the Red Army arrived and everything went back to normal again and we were all living together in a republic or a democracy, or who knew what, since as far as I was concerned all revolutions were futile, not for people in general but for me, anyway, because I was lost and would never win Irena, from which it followed I really must love her after all, and so I did – that dumb, beautiful Irena who didn’t give a damn about me, that dimwitted girl with that little thinking machine in her head equipped with everything except the short waves we needed if we were ever going to establish contact. Which meant it must be her body I loved, and her face, but it wasn’t only that. It was also that magical aura that always surrounded her and that maybe I’d helped to create myself – that window open at night above the river with the stars, and the cliffs and the white rope and her hair and the sun that seemed to follow her wherever she went. Which meant I was in love with her after all and never wanted to get out of it either but then I thought about Lucie and how when I was with her I didn’t love Irena at all, and then about Vera and Helena and Mitzi and I knew I didn’t think about Irena when I was with them but now, now I was thinking about her and none of the others meant a thing to me now. And that this one thought only was important to me now, and only it was sure and everlasting and fixed. I lay on my back under the utterly pointless and monotonous blue sky and couldn’t hear anything except Benno’s snores and the hum of the town and up there in that pointless blue sky who do I see but Irena. There she is, and I’m with her, and at night I kiss her and caress her breasts and say, Irena, Irena, will you marry me? And she says yes and it’s morning in the church now and no one knows and I’m kneeling with Irena before the altar and sunlight streams through the windows on us and soon we’re mailing out little cards: Daniel Smiricky and his wife Irena announce that their marriage was performed in St Anthony’s Church. Then my thoughts grew vaguer and vaguer until I hardly knew myself what I was thinking about – about Irena or happiness, I guess – probably happiness since of the two it was vaguer and couldn’t be found up there in that pointless blue sky but in me. And I’d completely forgotten whatever it was I’d been thinking about when suddenly a sound rang out, a dark and peculiar sound completely different from all the tones I was listening to inside. It came from somewhere else, from outside, and I couldn’t figure out what was going on but then a whole series of fainter noises rang out, one after the other, fast and very regular, and then they stopped and then started up again and by then I knew something had happened and I sat up and Irena and everything else vanished and I was sitting on the grass again next to Benno and he was looking tensely off to the east and Haryk and the three other boys and Dr Bohadlo were, too, and none of us said a word. For a moment, it was perfectly still and then came another series of muffled mechanical raps and then another and another and then I knew what it was but still couldn’t figure out what was going on.
The Cowards Page 32