The Cowards

by Josef Skvorecky

  ‘Oh, go on, Irena, don’t be silly.’

  ‘You’re sure you don’t mind?’

  ‘Irena …’

  ‘Are you?’

  ‘Irena … maybe I shouldn’t say this right now, but … well, you know I love you.’

  ‘I know. That’s why.’

  ‘Well, so I don’t mind and I’m not angry at all, Irena.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘You know I can’t get angry at you.’

  ‘Well, then, all right. But then don’t be angry with me and let’s go, shall we?’

  ‘Sure,’ I said.

  ‘Come on,’ said Irena softly and soothingly and she stroked my hand and I was happy she was letting me come along with her and I knew I was being an idiot but maybe it was better to be an idiot like this than to be smart. I was glad I was so dumb.

  ‘Irena,’ I said softly.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You love him an awful lot, Irena?’

  ‘Yes.’

  We walked along without saying anything for a while and then I said, ‘Maybe he’s already back.’

  ‘Oh, God, I hope so.’

  Then nothing again, until Irena said, ‘Did anything happen to your friends in the band?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘Irena …’

  ‘What?’

  I came out with it. I couldn’t keep it back any longer. ‘Irena … if Zdenek’s been killed …’

  ‘Danny, don’t say any more!’

  ‘But you don’t know what …’

  ‘No, no. I know what you’re going to say.’

  ‘You don’t either.’

  ‘Yes, I do.’

  ‘But you don’t, Irena.’

  ‘Danny, I know what you’re going to say.’

  ‘And I can’t say it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because I don’t want you to.’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘Because Zdenek isn’t dead and, even if he were, it wouldn’t be fair to him for me to listen to you.’

  ‘But, Irena …’

  ‘No, I told you already.’

  ‘My God,’ I said in despair and I knew I’d say it anyway. So I asked her straight out, ‘Irena, what would you do if Zdenek was dead?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘Irena!’

  ‘No, don’t ask, Danny, there’s no sense in it. I can’t tell you. And anyway, he’s not dead. He’s alive and healthy.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Well then.’

  We crossed the bridge in silence and walked past the slaughterhouse towards the old power station. Lots of people were out on the street, and here and there you could see guys with rifles. The flags on the houses looked gay and the crowd was in a holiday mood. Sunk in our own problems – and Irena’s were nothing compared to mine – we made our way through the crowd and past the power station, past the spinning mill, up by the high school and then towards the underpass and I remembered that only three or four days before the Germans had brought me the same way and how scared Irena had been for me then and it seemed a long time ago. We went through the underpass. At Sokol Hall, the custodian and another old codger were hanging up a huge portrait of Benes and all sorts of garlands. I looked down at the sidewalk and saw that, in spite of yesterday’s rain, you could still make out a small red stain. Or maybe it was only my imagination. Why in hell couldn’t it have been Zdenek’s blood instead of Mrs Vasakova’s? We kept on going and turned left on the street leading up the hill to the army cemetery. The street was shady because it was narrow and there were little houses on both sides. Not an awful lot of celebrating going on in this part of town. I looked at Irena and could tell she wasn’t with me at all any more, but all wrapped up in her thoughts about Zdenek.

  ‘You want me to go in with you?’ I asked.

  ‘Of course,’ she said and I could see she didn’t really want me to but that she didn’t want to say no to me now after coming this far with her. That’d be a swell revenge, I thought, if I’d stick with her now and pretend I was crazy with relief and joy to find Zdenek still alive and then hang around in his room with them all afternoon. Only it wouldn’t really be any revenge; it’d be idiotic and I’d feel more embarrassed than they would. We stopped in front of a small, yellow, one-storey house and Irena rang the bell. We stood waiting and then heard footsteps shuffling along the hall and the click of a bolt and a wrinkled old woman opened the door.

  ‘Good morning,’ Irena said sweetly.

  ‘Good morning,’ the old woman said.

  ‘Could you tell me, please, has Zdenek come back yet.’

  ‘No,’ said the old woman.

  ‘He hasn’t?’

  ‘No.’

  Irena hesitated for a second. Then she said, ‘Could we wait for him?’

  ‘If you want to, miss,’ said the old woman, and stepped out of the doorway.

  ‘Come on, Danny,’ said Irena. I went in and said ‘how do you do’ to the old woman, and then Irena opened a door on the left side of the hall and we went into Zdenek’s room. I shut the door behind me and there we were, alone. It was dark in the room because the brown windowshade was drawn; a dim yellow light poured over the old-fashioned furniture; in the silence you could hear flies buzzing. Along the wall opposite the window stood a bed – brown-painted pipes with brass balls on top, a faded bedspread. A heavy, beat-up, carved, and painted cupboard stood next to the door. Along the wall across from the door was a little wooden marbletop table with a flowered porcelain wash basin on it. Beside the table was a faded plush couch and a wall rack with lots of little vases and figurines of shepherds and shepherdesses. There was a desk by the window with a big photograph of Irena on it and, in the corner, a rubber plant on a stand and, under the stand, grapples and a coil of climbing ropes. In the middle of the room three chairs stood around a table covered with a heavy green cloth. Irena walked across the room and sat down on the couch. I went over and sat down next to her. Neither of us said anything. I looked around the room.

  ‘Have you been here before?’ she asked.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘It’s a nice place.’

  ‘Well, it’s not too comfortable, but I think it’s pretty,’ she said.

  After another long pause, I asked, ‘You come here often?’

  Irena laughed and you could tell that that little head of hers was practically bursting with memories.

  ‘Often enough,’ she said, and blushed a little.

  ‘Doesn’t the landlady mind?’

  ‘No,’ said Irena.

  ‘You’re lucky,’ I said.

  Irena got up and started pacing around the room. I watched her, thinking how beautiful she looked in her green striped dress and in that dim light that made her face look even sweeter because all you could really make out were her lips and dark eyes. She stopped by the table, picked up a little Buddha, and turned it in her hand.

  ‘I gave this to him,’ she said softly.

  ‘Hmm,’ I said, unable to think of anything else to say or do. Irena set the Buddha back down on the table. She opened the cupboard and stood there in front of it. I saw a few of Zdenek’s jackets and a coiled climbing rope on a hook and a neat pile of shirts and underwear. Irena stared at the clothes, lost in thought. I couldn’t stand it any more.

  ‘Irena,’ I said.

  ‘Hmm?’ she said without even turning around.

  ‘Irena, how’d you meet Zdenek anyway?’

  Then she turned, looked at me and said, ‘Why do you ask, Danny?’

  ‘No reason in particular,’ I said and looked down at the floor. ‘I just wondered.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Really.’

  ‘Well, I don’t know … Danny …’

  ‘What don’t you know?’

  ‘You sure it won’t just make you angry or sad again?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Truly?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘I’d really like to know. Everything about you interests me. Y
ou know that.’

  ‘I know. But this …’

  ‘Tell me, Irena. Please.’

  ‘Well, all right,’ she said, and closed the cupboard and came over and sat down on the couch not too close to me and leaned back. She crossed her legs and her skirt rode up over her pretty knees which I noticed were a little bruised. But she pulled down her skirt right away.

  ‘It was at Wet Rock,’ she said. ‘Just a year ago. I’d gone over with some friends and we’d climbed Chapel Cliff. You know the one?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. But in my eyes Irena didn’t fit at all with Zdenek and his crew with their nature cult and all that sitting around on rocks to watch the sun go down. She belonged indoors, in a kimono and little slippers with pompons made out of bird-of-paradise feathers, lounging around in the bedroom. That’s where she belonged and not all wound up in ropes, dangling over the side of a cliff. I listened to her husky voice which gave away a lot more than just what she was saying.

  ‘And Zdenek …’ she said, ‘was there with a group from Stare Mesto and they were going up over the Pehr approach to Chapel Cliff. You traverse to the overhang and, from there on up, you have to use pitons.’

  ‘I know,’ I said, but what I was thinking of wasn’t what Irena had in mind.

  ‘And I was right under the overhang and Mirek was already up and secured me and, all of a sudden, there was Zdenek up on the traverse and he saw me and he looked at me and then just stared.’

  Irena paused for a moment. Then she went on and her eyes had a remote stare now. ‘It was evening but the cliff was still in the sun and the tops of the trees down below were shining and the sky was already completely pink and Zdenek was wearing that leather jacket of his and I looked across at him and I liked him. He had nice wavy hair and it shone in the sun and he was looking at me, too, so I thought – though why, I don’t know – maybe we’ll get to know each other, and then he climbed up and helped the person behind him up too and then looked around and came over to me and said, “Mind if I join you?” Or something like that, I don’t remember any more, it was something like that anyway, and I said, “Well, it was about time you asked, isn’t it?” and I really didn’t mean to put it like that but it just came out like that, that’s all, and then he told me he’d been assigned to work for Messerschmidt in Stare Mesto and I told him I worked at the post office and then we roped together and went for a walk in the woods together and it was nearly two hours before we came back to the …’

  Listening to her, I could picture the whole scene – the woods and the tops of the cliffs dripping with sunshine as if it was honey and the deep evening forest and Zdenek leading Irena deeper and deeper into the woods, and then kissing her. The most incredible thing about the whole business was that I also existed then and that all this was going on completely independently of me. I was being bored stiff at a welding course at Messerschmidt’s in the meantime.

  ‘We made a date for the following Sunday,’ Irena was saying, ‘because he was in the factory then where they worked from something like six in the morning until late at night. I was off duty the next afternoon and I went over to Honza’s to get some climbing irons and I was just crossing the tracks by the station when all of a sudden I saw him getting off the train, and when he saw me he came right over. I asked him what he was doing there and he said he’d taken sick leave and had a whole week off so I told him to come over to Honza’s with me but he wanted to go for a walk in the woods so that’s where we finally went.’

  Irena fell silent. ‘Well, so now you know how it happened,’ she said after a while.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘And then?’

  ‘Then? What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, afterwards. How did he manage to come to live in Kostelec?’

  Irena laughed. ‘He was in Stare Mesto for a while and then he arranged to be transferred.’

  ‘To be near you, right?’

  ‘Naturally,’ said Irena, and suddenly she looked very serious and said, ‘Oh, God, you really don’t think anything’s happened to him, do you, Danny?’

  ‘Of course not,’ I said.

  ‘I couldn’t bear it,’ she said. A clock was ticking somewhere in the room and the shade was a rectangle of brown light over the window.

  ‘Irena,’ I said. I uttered her name like a magic charm. Like balm for my own hurt soul.

  ‘Yes,’ she said.

  ‘Irena, have you ever …’

  ‘What?’ she answered softly and automatically.

  ‘Is there – has there been – anything between you?’

  She didn’t answer. Her face was motionless and I couldn’t for the life of me tell what she was thinking just then. I felt I’d gone too far and quickly and guiltily said, ‘Irena …’

  ‘Hmm?’ she said very faintly.

  ‘Are you angry at me?’

  ‘No, Danny.’

  ‘I’m glad. Because … well, you know how much I love you.’

  ‘I know,’ she said, and laid her hand on mine. But she still hadn’t admitted that there’d been anything between them. I knew there had been but I wanted to hear it from her. Since I’d never got anywhere with her, I at least wanted to hear how far he’d got with her.

  ‘Irena,’ I repeated, ‘did you have an affair with him?’

  She bent her head and said, ‘Well, after all, Danny, we’ve been going together for a year now.’

  ‘I know,’ I said, and felt miserable. I’d have given anything if she’d only let me have an affair with her, too. But I knew I didn’t have much to offer. I quickly thought about what really great thing I had that I could sacrifice for her. The saxophone! I could play the saxophone better than anybody – nobody in the district could even begin to touch me when I was playing my tenor sax. So I could give that up. Rather never pick up my sax again than never once have an affair with Irena, I said to myself. Then, even head over heels in love as I was with her right then, the more I thought about it the less sure I was that I’d really do it and I said to myself, Sure you would! Damn right you would! By God, and you will, too! And I even swore to God I’d never play my sax again if only He’d let me have Irena and then I modified it a bit and swore I’d stop playing when I was thirty – or forty – and at the same time, in some dark corner of my soul, I was pretty sure that something would come up which would get me off the hook somehow so that, actually, I didn’t swear to anything and I hadn’t given anything up but, in spite of that, I was still in love with Irena, awfully and unbearably and deeply. I longed for her. Then I noticed she was squeezing my hand and I heard her say, ‘Danny?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Don’t think about it.’

  I switched on a melancholy smile. ‘I just can’t help it, Irena,’ I said.

  ‘You mustn’t.’

  ‘There’s nothing I can do about it. I have to.’

  ‘But you’re with me, too, and you mean an awful lot to me, you know ?’

  ‘Honestly, Irena?’

  ‘Honestly.’

  ‘Irena,’ I said yearningly, putting my arm around her shoulder.

  ‘No, Danny,’ she said, taking my hand and setting it back on my knee. ‘There,’ she said.

  I looked dejected.

  ‘And don’t be sad,’ she said.

  ‘But I love you so much.’

  ‘I know, Danny, but there’s nothing we can do about it.’

  That made me mad. Nothing we can do about it! She’s always said that. And there was something we could do, if she really wanted to. Plenty, if only she had a little room left for me in her heart. But she preferred to play virtuous, getting me all excited, and meanwhile the only reason she was so virtuous was because I didn’t appeal to her or excite her as much as Zdenek did. I didn’t believe in fidelity and all that other rot. All it was was just an excuse girls waved around so they could make life miserable for not just one guy but for as many as possible. I was mad, but there wasn’t anything I could do about it. It was up to her to make the next move. Irena looked at
her watch.

  ‘It’s already two,’ she said. I wasn’t hungry; the time had flown by. ‘Shouldn’t we ask again?’ said Irena.

  ‘Wait a minute,’ I said. ‘I’ll run over to Sokol Hall and phone.’ I wanted to keep Irena in that room with me as long as I could.

  ‘That’d be awfully nice of you, Danny.’

  ‘Aren’t I always?’

  ‘You are. You’re wonderful.’

  Wonderful. Well, sure. A wonderful idiot who put up with everything. I got up. ‘Good-bye,’ I said. ‘I’ll be right back.’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Irena, and she gave me a smile for the road. I hurried out of the room and the house and ran down to Sokol Hall as fast as I could so I could get right back to Irena again. I went inside and over to the telephone and dialled the brewery and waited.

  Then a voice came. ‘Army Headquarters.’

  ‘Hello,’ I said. ‘Do you have the full casualty list already, please?’

  ‘Yes,’ the voice said.

  ‘Would you kindly tell me if a Zdenek Pivonka is listed.’

  ‘Just a minute,’ said the voice. I waited tensely. I knew my wish wouldn’t come true, but I waited anyway. It took a long time. I prayed he’d be on the list this time.

  ‘Hello?’ the voice came back.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘No, he’s not listed.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And that’s the final list?’

  ‘Yes. All the dead have been identified.’

  ‘But he hasn’t come back yet.’

  ‘I’m sorry, but he’s not on the list.’

  ‘I wonder where he could be then?’

  ‘Possibly out on patrol somewhere.’

  ‘On patrol?’

  ‘Yes. Some of the patrols went out to clear the woods of SS men.’

  ‘I see. Well, thank you very much.’

  ‘You’re welcome.’

  ‘Good-bye,’ I said, and hung up. Sure. Zdenek was probably out hunting Germans someplace. Nobody could kill that guy. Well, that’s okay too – let him hunt, I thought to myself. Meanwhile, I’d make as much use of my time with Irena as possible. I hurried out. Or maybe they’d got him off after all – somewhere way off back in the woods – and just hadn’t found his body yet. As I headed back up the hill, the idea that he really was dead and no longer stood in my way swept over me – I could see Irena grieving, Irena wearing a black dress to his funeral and then observing a period of mourning for a while and then getting tired of it and then going around with me. And as I walked along, I thought over my strategy in the time I had ahead of me and drew up a general plan of action. I rang the doorbell and suddenly there was Irena. The old lady hadn’t even shown up to open the door for me. She was probably one of those landladies who don’t worry too much about their tenants’ visitors. Then I thought about all that had probably gone on here before between Irena and Zdenek.