The Cowards

by Josef Skvorecky

  ‘Hi,’ I said in a low voice.

  ‘Hi,’ said Rosta. He was leaning against a crate. ‘Boy,’ he said.

  ‘Let’s go,’ I said.

  The moaning started again.

  ‘Lie down, you son of a bitch!’ said somebody in a deep voice. I went over next to Rosta. ‘Take him out and finish him off,’ the voice went on.

  ‘Next customer!’ another voice yelled. Two guys ran over to one of the remaining SS men and dragged him over under the light. His eyes were bulging and he struggled automatically and then they started ripping his clothes off. They went at him like madmen, tearing away from every side and in no time at all he was completely naked. He had a sweaty white muscular body.

  ‘Come on, Rosta, let’s go,’ I said and we went out. Out in the yard a dim sun was shining. People had stopped to stare at two battered SS men who were being dragged off somewhere behind the icehouse. We followed them. I looked around. Major Weiss, in full uniform again, was striding solemnly around the corner of the icehouse with Mr Kaldoun. We went around the icehouse, too. There stood another bunch of people and under the cooling pipes lay a pile of corpses. The walls of the icehouse gleamed white in the sunshine and the bits of mica glittered in the stucco. The men leading the SS men stopped. Sergeant Krpata and some other guys stood by the wall. Krpata had his revolver out.

  ‘Stand ’em up over there,’ Krpata commanded. The men lined the SS men up against the wall.

  ‘Also!’ yelled Krpata. ‘You can thank your Führer for this!’

  Then he pressed the muzzle of the pistol up against the forehead of the first SS man and pulled the trigger. Then he shot the second one. The men let go and both bodies crumpled to the ground.

  ‘Take them away and bring in the next,’ said Krpata.

  ‘Come on,’ I said.

  We turned and left. Neither of us said anything. The sun was burning through the morning haze; it started getting warm. People were streaming back and forth along the path to the main building.

  ‘Where were you yesterday? said Rosta.

  ‘At the customs house. You?’ I said.

  ‘Nowhere.’

  ‘You hid out?’

  ‘I didn’t have a weapon. They gave me a rifle and ammunition but the bullets didn’t fit.’

  ‘You didn’t miss much,’ I said.

  Rosta was silent for a little while. Then he said, ‘What do you think about all that anyway?’

  ‘You mean back there?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘What can you say? It’s just – just Goya.’

  ‘Goya? He’s shit compared to that.’

  ‘You’re right.’ I didn’t feel like talking about it. We went over to the gate. I remembered those two brothers that guy had showed me last night at the brewery. With their eyes gouged out. The bastards, I said to myself. Except the ones that did it had probably cleared out and these others were paying for it. What the hell, maybe they have the same sort of thing on their consciences, too, but how could you know for sure? And how could you tell whether they had on their consciences what Mr Mozol and the others here were loading up on their own right now? I knew a few people who had plenty on theirs. Regierungskommissar Kühl. How he bellowed at the Jews when they were standing in line in front of the station, waiting to be taken off. He’d never been sent off to the front. Ein alter Mitkämpfer, he’d been a member of the Nazi Party since 1928. Then there was that bastard Staukelmann who’d turned in Lexa’s father, who was later shot because that was the easiest way to get hold of Lexa’s father’s apartment. And then later, when we already had our band and we donated the proceeds of two concerts to Lexa’s mother, Staukelmann informed about that, too, because informing had become a habit with him by then, and the only reason nothing came of that was because Dr Sabata had bribed some big wheel from the Gestapo with a case or two of slivovitz. Or Zieglosser, head of the personnel department at Metal, who used to pad around the factory picking out girls and then he’d have them called in to his office and if they didn’t come across, they’d be shipped off to the Reich. Like that seamstress Bozka I’d worked with. God knows whether she’d ever get back alive. The bastard. And all of them had cleared out in time. That kind always did. And then when you’d forgotten all about them, they’d turn up again and in the meantime somebody else had to pay for what they’d done. Maybe these SS guys they were killing now hadn’t been half as bad as Kühl and Staukelmann and Zieglosser had been.

  We stopped beside the pile of the SS men’s things. Somebody was screaming again inside the warehouse. A German rucksack made out of calfskin lay at my feet; a pamphlet had fallen out of it. I bent over and picked it up. It showed tanks marked with Prussian crosses moving across a field; the Gothic-script title was Woran Wir Glauben – What We Believe In. I flipped through it, stopped at one passage, and read:

  For us, there are only two possibilities: either what we believe in is a mistaken belief and history has not called us to this task and we have only deluded ourselves as to our mission, in which case we will not complete it and, sooner or later, will vanish from the stage of this life and none of us will shed a tear for this great movement but say, instead, ‘We were weighed in the scales and found wanting,’ Or …

  I shut the pamphlet and saw a hay wagon loaded with corpses creaking by. It moved slowly and I could see a hand dangling out of the pile and it seemed to be groping around as if it was looking for something.

  ‘Where you taking them?’ somebody asked the wagon driver.

  ‘Into the woods,’ he said.

  We went along the path to the main building.

  ‘They’ve shown what sadists they are underneath,’ burst out Rosta. ‘The bastards.’

  ‘You seen Dagmar?’ I said. ‘Is she all right?’

  ‘Sure,’ said Rosta. ‘She stayed inside and kept out of trouble.’

  ‘She did?’

  ‘How about Irena?’

  ‘She volunteered as a nurse.’

  ‘Have you talked to her?’

  ‘Not yet.’ The thought of seeing Irena suddenly hit me with an almost physical force. To be with her! If only I could go to her right now! I felt as if somebody had grabbed my hand and started pulling me.

  ‘I’m going home,’ I told Rosta. ‘So long.’

  ‘Wait,’ said Rosta. ‘Maybe the other guys are around some place.’

  ‘Well, maybe they are, but I’ve got to take off. See you later.’

  ‘Well, okay. See you,’ said Rosta, as if he couldn’t quite figure out what was going on. I turned and hurried off. I felt driven to move. There was nothing I could do against it – except go. I decided I’d set out to find her and suddenly it seemed the easiest and most natural thing in the world. Sure. If only I’d done it first thing in the morning, instead of going to the brewery. The wagon with the SS men had just creaked through the gate and women were standing around outside gazing in horror. I went out through the gate and there she was – Irena. My heart skipped a beat she was so beautiful and I loved her so much. She stood there in her dress with the thin green stripes and her hair was drawn back and tied with a white ribbon. Her red lips were slightly open and her eyes looked worried. Irena! It was as if God had sent her to me.

  ‘Hello, Irena,’ I said to her before she’d even seen me.

  She turned her great big eyes on me and hurried over.

  ‘Danny!’ she said with relief in her voice, as if I was going to protect her from something. ‘Where’s Zdenek?’

  ‘Zdenek?’ I said. The question came like a slap in the face. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Haven’t you seen him?’ she persisted. ‘Don’t you know where he was? Or where he went?’

  ‘I don’t know, Irena. The last time I saw him was yesterday at the brewery.’

  ‘Don’t you know where he was when the shooting started?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Oh God. He hasn’t come back yet, Danny.’

  ‘He hasn’t? Well, all
I know is, he wanted to go with the mountain climbers.’ I felt a sharp pain. Not because Zdenek hadn’t come back, but because Irena was in love with him.

  ‘I know,’ said Irena with an impatient frown. ‘But he didn’t come back with them!’

  ‘You talk with any of them?’

  ‘Yes. They were out at the customs house. But they haven’t seen him since then.’

  ‘And …’ I said hesitantly as my hopes began to rise. Except that was nonsense. I’d never be that lucky. ‘And did you ask – did you look at the casualty list?’

  ‘Yes, but he’s not listed. Danny, will you please run in and ask at the Brewery?’ She looked at me imploringly. I certainly didn’t feel like going anywhere – I just wanted to be with her.

  ‘They won’t know anything. I can tell you that right now.’

  ‘I know, but ask anyway, will you please? I’ve got to find out somehow,’ Irena said, and grasped my hand. My God, but I was crazy about that girl. How could she ever have seemed dumb to me? But she was and I loved her anyway. Obviously that didn’t have anything to do with it.

  ‘All right, Irena,’ I said, as if it wasn’t an easy thing for me to do. ‘They won’t know anything, but if you want me to, I’ll go.’

  ‘Please, Danny. Thanks ever so much.’

  I squeezed her hand and she squeezed mine a little and smiled at me. I walked over to the main building and went in. The place was like a beehive except here it was swarming with people. I went into one room and elbowed my way up to the desk. Behind the desk sat Captain Kuratko talking to someone on the telephone and jotting things down from time to time.

  ‘Captain, have you got the casualty list?’ I called out over some old man’s head.

  The captain glanced up at me and, when he saw who I was, answered, ‘It’s not complete.’

  ‘Could I take a look anyway?’

  ‘Here,’ he said, and handed me a sheet of paper. There were around forty names typed on the paper. I read down. Hrob was listed but none of our guys were. There was Mrs Vasakova and Lidka Jarosova, but no Zdenek. I read through it again with fading hopes, but there was no Zdenek this time either. I just didn’t have that kind of luck. He’d turn up. I knew it and I felt like laughing so now I’d go out and comfort Irena and in a while Zdenek would surface somewhere and come back and walk off with Irena. In the end it was always me that had to clear out.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said, and put the list back down on the table.

  ‘You’re welcome,’ said Captain Kuratko with his ear to the telephone. I walked out. Hell, no, they wouldn’t kill Zdenek. Mrs Vasakova sure, but not him. I could just see those buckteeth of his and his fat lips and big face, and it made me mad. I saw Irena standing on the other side of the fence, holding on to the bars with her little white fingers, watching me nervously. If only I could tell her he’d been killed. That he was dead and killed and all shot up and done for, but I couldn’t. And I never would no matter how much I might long to. I walked towards Irena and on out through the gate and, as she turned to me with fear in her eyes, I shook my head.

  ‘Nothing,’ I said.

  ‘Nothing?’

  ‘He isn’t on it.’

  ‘What’d they say?’

  ‘Nothing. But his name isn’t on the casualty list. It’s not complete yet, though.’

  ‘And they don’t know where he could be?’

  ‘No. But we can ask again when they get more names.’

  ‘When will that be?’

  I shrugged. ‘We could come back sometime this afternoon.’

  Irena sighed and leaned against the fence. She looked crushed and she was beautiful in her green striped dress with the nice legs under it and her white sandals. Jesus, why was she so wild about that guy anyway? He wasn’t worth it. And what did she need to bother about anyone else for anyway when she was so pretty and when everybody would do anything in the world for her?

  ‘Oh, goodness,’ she sighed. ‘Oh, goodness, I just pray he wasn’t shot.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ I said.

  Irena didn’t say anything. She just stared at the ground.

  ‘Don’t worry, Irena,’ I repeated. There wasn’t much else I could do now, except to try to comfort her. ‘Don’t worry. You already been over to his place?’

  She nodded.

  ‘And the landlady doesn’t know anything?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And you’ve checked at the hospital?’

  Irena jumped. ‘Oh, Lord, I’m stupid,’ she said, but it was all the same to me. I was crazy about her anyway.

  ‘Well, let’s go on over.’

  ‘Will you come with me, Danny?’ she asked.

  ‘Sure,’ I said.

  ‘That’s awfully nice of you, Danny,’ she said, and we started off. Idiot, I said to myself. Still, the way she’d said how ‘awfully nice’ it was of me had been like a caress. We started off towards the hospital. Irena walked fast. Neither of us said anything. I noticed how tightly her dress fitted across her hips and stomach and how nice it looked where it came together over her breasts. Beautiful, except they stood out as if they were on display and I couldn’t help thinking that big jackass Zdenek had already sampled them and that that was probably all he was after, and now there she was, beside herself with anxiety – as if, in case he’d kicked off, nobody else would be interested. It was crazy. There I was who would have given anything to be able to sleep with her and practically dying of longing and there she was calmly walking along beside me in that tight provocative dress scared stiff about her dear little Zdenek and absolutely blind to me. Was I any worse or dumber or uglier than he was? God, how I hoped he was dead! If only they’d shot and killed and hacked him up into little pieces, just so you, Irena, would come to understand. But exactly what was she supposed to understand? And I didn’t really wish the guy all that bad. Let him live, and even love Irena – fine. As long as Irena left him for me. But, no, her little soul wouldn’t let her. That silly, girlish soul of hers said no. I looked at her, at her sweet creamy cheeks and the white ribbon in her hair and she was beautiful. We turned into the hospital yard and went up to the main building.

  ‘You want me to ask?’ I said.

  ‘I’ll go myself, Danny.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I know Dr Capek, remember?’ said Irena. I should have remembered. But then I was a fool.

  ‘Well, I’ll wait for you here,’ I said. Irena’s striped dress disappeared through the door and I sat down on a bench in front of the surgery pavilion. It faced northwest and the sun was already high enough to reach the pavilion. I looked up at the western hills, at the edge of the woods and Prague was there beyond it, somewhere in the distance, and that gave me new strength. What the hell, I said to myself, I can manage without Irena and I’ll go off to Prague and play Dixieland and somewhere there’ll be an entirely different sort of girl and I’ll go up to her room with her and she’ll take off her clothes for me and let me touch her and we’ll have an affair and I’ll be able to do whatever I want with her. Yet I sensed it wouldn’t be the same as if I could have Irena now, that nobody would ever really replace her, not even the most beautiful girl in the world, and that I didn’t care about seeing just any naked girl, only Irena, and the only person I wanted to touch and make love to was Irena. I felt awfully depressed. I shut my eyes and my temples ached. I sat there in dull despair for an awfully long time. Then, at first as if from a long way off and then close by, I heard Irena’s voice saying ‘thank you very much’ to somebody and somebody saying he’d telephone her father immediately if anything came up and I opened my eyes and saw her standing with Dr Capek on the steps by the entrance, saying good-bye. I got up off the bench and joined her. She looked at me gravely.

  ‘Well?’ I asked.

  ‘Nothing,’ she said in a tragic voice and looked at her watch. ‘Danny, will you come with me?’ The way she looked at me, I would have gone with her for ever and anywhere.

  ‘Sure, Irena.’

&nbs
p; ‘I’d like to stop by at his place again and see if maybe he’s come back in the meantime.’

  ‘All right,’ I said and was all ready to go, but Irena just stood there.

  ‘Danny, you … you’re not angry at me, are you?’

  ‘Why should I be angry?’

  ‘For dragging you around with me like this.’

  ‘Oh, you’re not dragging me anywhere.’

  ‘Yes, I am, Danny. I …’