The Cowards

by Josef Skvorecky

  ‘They probably are,’ I said. The idea had never occurred to me. For me, for us, for us here at home, they were Russians and Bolsheviks. For this guy next to me, they were workers. My head started to ache.

  ‘Tell me, Danny,’ said Siddell and there was a touch of – I’m not sure what – mockery, maybe, in his eyes. ‘Are you glad the Russians are here? Or would you rather have the British?’

  I looked at him. There was no doubt about it. He was making fun of me all right. He’d seen our place and all the other homes I’d arranged for them to stay in – like an idiot. I got mad.

  ‘You’re all workers, too, aren’t you? You and the sergeant and all the rest of you?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Siddell. ‘But … there’s a difference.’

  ‘I know,’ I said. I thought a while and then asked, ‘Why do you ask these questions? You’ve seen my family. You know we’d rather have the English.’

  ‘No need to get sore, Danny,’ said Siddell, and he smiled at me. ‘You’re a good chap. And your mother is a very kind lady.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘Maybe I’d rather have the English. But the Russians are here now. There’s no changing that.’

  ‘You’re right. That can’t be changed,’ said Siddell, and again it seemed to me he said it pretty complacently.

  We went into the station and out onto the platform. There were lots of Englishmen and Frenchmen standing around waiting for the train. We went over to the bunch of Englishmen. The sergeant was prowling around, keeping an eye on things. As soon as he saw me, he grinned and saluted.

  ‘Well,’ I said. ‘So you’re going home. After five years.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said the sergeant.

  ‘That’s nice,’ I said. ‘I hope you liked it here.’

  ‘Yes. And thank you very much for everything you’ve done for my boys.’

  ‘Oh, never mind,’ I said. I didn’t feel like talking about it. I knew my world was leaving along with them but I wasn’t sure whether it had ever really been my world at all, whether it hadn’t been just a world I’d known from the movies and that the only thing I really had in common with them was the English language. The train slowly pulled into the station. Conductors were standing on the steps with whistles in their mouths and red flags in their hands. The soldiers started running towards the train. The sergeant yelled a command. His men lined up, then started off on the double. The Frenchmen swarmed around. There were many more of them than there were Englishmen. But even before the train had come to a stop, the Englishmen overtook them like a rugby team on the offensive. In a few seconds, they were grinning at me out of the windows. I stood next to their coach and looked up at them.

  ‘When you come to England,’ called Siddell, ‘don’t forget to come to Liverpool.’

  ‘And to the West End,’ yelled the sergeant.

  ‘I won’t,’ I said. It was all a big act. The train slowly swallowed up the tide of uniforms and the dispatcher in a red cap blew his whistle. The train started to move.

  ‘Farewell!’ I yelled up to the window and shook a couple of hands that reached down to me.

  ‘Good-bye, Danny,’ I heard voices call, but I couldn’t see very well because my eyes were full of tears. I was bawling like an old whore. And I wasn’t any better than one. I was a fool, an idiot, a Robinson Crusoe ruined, beaten, lost. I was overcome by grief. Not just because they were leaving. But because of everything. Everything in the world. The train was leaving and I could hear the Englishmen’s voices singing ‘Tipperary’ in my honour. They’re going, I thought to myself, they’re going home and they’ll kiss their wives and tell about their adventures and they’ll drink beer with their neighbours who stayed at home. Life is beginning again for them. It had begun for me, too. A new chapter in a life that was always the same. What the hell. I picked up my saxophone case and went out of the station. The saxophone weighed me down. I walked past the sun-warmed western side of Irena’s house, across the bridge with the broken railing and under the weeping willows, up towards the Port Arthur. I could hear them playing. I was late. I opened the door and there they were. They were sitting in a line, without their coats and with their ties loosened and the sun fell on them through the window, Benno with his droolly trumpet up to his lips, Lexa’s pale fingers on the keys of the clarinet, Venca’s swollen cheeks and sliding valve, Haryk with his legs crossed and his Gibson guitar in his lap, Jindra with his hat on his head, embracing his bass, and Brynych’s freckled, mousey face behind the drums. They were just giving out with ‘King Porter Stomp’, Venca’s tailgate trombone snapping rhythmically while Benno played his teasing melody over it, sweet and sad and simple. At the table by the window the sun fell on Lucie’s golden hair and on the lipsticked lips of Benno’s Helena. I took off my jacket and opened the case. The music poured over me like a healing shower. Quickly I took out my sax, fitted it together, hung the cord around my neck, and hooked my sax on. Then, just as I was, I came right in on tenor, slowly walking over to my chair, playing as I walked. My fingers moved all by themselves. I played without thinking. It all came out right and free. This was life. This, right here, was life. I sat down and in one breath finished that wonderful. sweeping foxtrot along with the rest of them.

  When it was over, Benno said, ‘Where’ve you been?’

  ‘Seeing off the Englishmen,’ I said. I looked around. ‘Where’s Fonda?’

  ‘In mourning,’ said Haryk. ‘So no piano.’

  ‘You guys ready?’ said Benno. ‘Let’s play.’

  ‘What’ll it be?’ said Haryk.

  ‘ “Rent Party”?’ Venca suggested.

  ‘Okay,’ said Benno, and we started in.

  ‘What time do we start tonight?’ I asked afterwards.

  ‘Six,’ said Benno. ‘Where were you all day yesterday anyway?’

  ‘Why?’ I said.

  ‘Well, you didn’t show up for patrol.’

  ‘You mean you went out again yesterday?’

  ‘Naturally, stupid,’ said Benno.

  ‘We cleaned up the woods,’ said Haryk.

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Yeah. And we nearly knocked off old man Petrbok.’

  ‘Why didn’t you?’ I said.

  ‘Because they are stupid, that’s why,’ said Benno.

  ‘Shit,’ said Venca. ‘That was a real shit party all right.’

  ‘What happened?’ I asked.

  ‘Well,’ said Venca, ‘there we were cruising through the woods with our machine guns, see, all strung out about five yards apart, and all of a sudden we see something move in the bushes, so Haryk yells out “Halt! Wer da?” and it was Petrbok and he screamed like somebody was murdering him, “Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot! I’m a Czech!” So Haryk …’

  ‘So I yelled “Aaaa – ein Tscheche! Raus!” ’ said Haryk, ‘and Petrbok was scared shitless and started screaming “Nein, nein, ich bin Freund, ich bin Deutschfreundlich!” So we just dragged him out of the bushes and sent him home.’

  ‘What was he doing there anyway?’ I said.

  ‘He was on his way back from Black Mountain. He’d lit out for his father-in-law’s place the night before last, when all the shooting started.’

  ‘Come on, let’s get with it,’ said Benno impatiently. We started in with ‘St Louis Blues’. I played like a madman, trying to drown out my thoughts. Then it was half past five and Benno said we’d have to go. We put our instruments into our cases and went out. In the meantime the sun had dropped in the west and was lighting up the first windows. The lovely, pointless city lay spread out beneath us in all its springtime colour – lilacs on Castle Hill, cherry blossoms in the gardens, the fresh flags in the windows.

  ‘We’ll eat there,’ said Benno. ‘Prudivy said there’d be grub for all hands.’

  We pulled our cartful of instruments. Everything was over now and we were setting out to play the farewell serenade. We’d set out with our cart like this thousands of times. I remembered that winter afternoon in 1943 when we gave concerts in the
neighbouring towns and held jam sessions for our fans on Black Mountain and in Provodova and Hermanovice and all over in those little out-of-the-way mountain villages, mushing through the ice and snow with the bass fiddle and drums and a procession of faithful zootsuiters tagging along behind us, and I thought about the snow-drifted little taverns with their rickety chairs and the bartenders who looked at us as if we were crazy and the old-timers who listened in disgust to our carryings-on and then filed out one by one. I could still see the low ceiling and kerosene lamps in Provodova and the local zootsuiters dancing in their thick rubber-soled shoes with their girls who’d come in high felt boots with their dancing shoes in their pockets. I could see their shadows writhing and twisting against the whitewashed walls, dancing their own bastard breed of swing, and Benno in his green sweater swilling rose hip tea, and Lexa in ski pants, and I could taste the reed in my mouth and smell the ersatz tea and I thought about the moonlight rides on the sled at night with the black saxophone case on my lap and the dark rotund figure of Benno ahead of me, whizzing down into the valley where the sleeping town lay without a light in sight and there was only the hum of the factories and for me the whole scene still echoed with those blues we’d played all over the district and I remembered the midnight blues on New Year’s Eve in 1944 on the ski jump at Black Mountain, four months ago, in the bitter cold dark with a dark half circle of faithful fans standing down below and how the icy air poured into your lungs at each breath and how Lexa goofed on his clarinet because his fingers froze and I remembered my hands in the knitted gloves with the tips of the fingers cut off playing ‘Basin Street Blues’ which floated out over the valley and trickled down the snow-covered mountainside with the wind and the snowflakes and it sounded strange and new and wonderfully absurd on Black Mountain during the German occupation on the thirty-first day of December, nineteen hundred and forty-four. And I remembered the battles we’d had with the polka partisans and the apple cores they’d thrown at us and the faithful zootsuiters who tangled with the gang from Malina while we skipped out the back way with our instruments, and the illegal jazz magazine O.K., which guitarist Ludvik ‘Louis’ Svab* brought us from Prague, from P. L. Doruzka,* and the dead Fritz Weiss* who, according to Benno, actually started a jazz band at Terezin before being taken off to the gas ovens.

  I was thinking about all this as we crossed the bridge and rattled triumphantly along with our cart on our way towards the square. Boys we knew greeted us from the sidewalks. ‘Hi, men,’ they said. They were all dressed up in sharp jackets and wide brimmed Tatra hats and pretty young girls looked at me and that made me feel good. Things weren’t so bad after all. I felt best here in this crowd with our instruments. I almost felt good. There weren’t any Petrboks or Prudivys around. I walked along with one hand in my pocket, shoving the cart nonchalantly with the other. Flags were flying in front of the houses like a salutation, red flags with hammers and sickles on them, and Benno’s rump was bouncing along in front of me again and his fat back in a plaid jacket. Except for Haryk and Lucie, who were having a fight, none of us said anything and I marched along behind our cart, silently, all wrapped up in my thoughts. Helena Reimannova came out of the Mouteliks’s and joined us and I thought about Irena and about how happy I’d been yesterday but that happiness had vanished and would never return, and then I put my hand on my saxophone case and thought to myself, I love it – that live, silver, comforting thing lying there in that case. But as we approached the square and as the vivid colours of the girls’ dresses flashed by and I saw all those made-up red lips and all those beautiful hairdos and legs, I yearned for Irena again. In vain. We came to the square and headed over towards City Hall. Near the speaker’s platform they’d set up a bandstand wreathed with green garlands. A few chairs stood on the stand. A bunch of guys our age and their girls had already gathered around us. There weren’t any older people. I knew they’d all be over at the Sokol garden where Mr Petrbok and his brass band were going to play polkas. We had this all to ourselves. Benno went inside and came back with Mr Pazler. They brought out some more chairs and we unloaded our instruments from the cart and took them over to the stand. Then we each got a bowl of soup and potatoes. We sat down next to our instruments and, while we ate, looked around. People were strolling back and forth around the church and a crowd was gathering near the bandstand. There were still plenty of refugees and soldiers in uniform mingled in among the local people and, right up front, some Russians stopped to gawk at us. The windows of the loan association office shone with a golden light; happy crowds streamed across the square. Everybody was laughing and talking. The customs house, the tanks, the shooting – it was all over now and had happened a long time ago. I thought about Hrob and the dead driver in the cab of the truck and the SS men over at the brewery and the two corpses in the warehouse. All over now. I took my saxophone out and adjusted the mouthpiece. The young guys and their girls stared as I slid my fingers up and down over the keys a couple of times, blew a few glissandos and smears, and then I took my saxophone out of my mouth and smiled at a pretty young girl down under the bandstand. I didn’t recognize her but she looked sort of familiar. She had on a slippery-looking tight-fitting red dress and had a beautiful girlish figure. She smiled back and kept looking straight at me. We stared at each other. Who was she, anyway? Then she dropped her eyes and started saying something very quickly to another girl whose arm she was holding. Then I remembered. It was one of old Dvorak’s twins, the guy who owned the auto-repair shop. I’d known her for ages but this was the first time I’d noticed she was so pretty. I couldn’t remember her name but I made up my mind to give her a try before leaving for Prague. Before meeting that other girl there. I felt old in comparison to the twin, like somebody from another generation, and she warmed my heart. She was going to carry on from where we were leaving off. With this zootsuit stuff and jazz, this way of life of ours. Squares like Petrbok and Machacek and the others, they didn’t understand it. According to them, we were no-good loafers and jazz was just something crazy and eccentric. Not for us it wasn’t. For us, it was life, and for me the only life. The only one possible and the best one.

  We finished eating and started tuning up. The crowd around the bandstand became alert. Benno was in charge today, instead of the orphaned Fonda, and Venca had his usual troubles with his trombone. Suddenly the people in the square were still. We stood and, like a priest lifting the chalice during mass, we put our horns to our mouths. Into the warm sun rays and into the shadows of the festive square we blew a theme we stole from the Cata Loma Band. We played it staccato and arrogantly, we blared the melody so that the burghers walking near the church turned towards us. I saw them shaking their heads, thinking ‘How can anyone listen to this?’ But those around the bandstand listened. No, not listened – they swallowed it, they absorbed it. Our band caught fire, we were roaring and swinging until we finished the number. When we sat down, we immediately burst into ‘Organ Grinder Swing’. The crowd around the bandstand started to move and in the next moment the plaza was full of jiving couples. I sat there on my chair looking out at the girls’ skirts twirling up and the silhouettes of the zootsuiters with their built-up shoulders swinging in the sunshine. Benno’s horn was aimed out over the dancers’ heads, the sun glinting on it, and Venca’s trombone slid in and out over people’s heads like the wand of the god of jazz and I just poked along modestly under the fast sharp ripples of Benno’s horn and I felt great. The sun was touching the roofs of the houses in the west and we sat there glittering in its rays, flashing our glorious music right back in its face. The sun was with us. Up on the hills the castle loomed, slanting across the blue sky. And the lovely Queen of Württemberg had driven off somewhere in her carriage, sleepy and bundled up in blankets, off and away to somewhere in Germany. I saw Mitzi down in the crowd, dancing with Prdlas, king of the zootsuiters, and Eva Manesova with Vorel, who wrote poetry, and over on the sidewalk I saw Rosta’s blond head and the rosy cheeks of Dagmar Dreslerova and Rosta had his a
rms around her. And I was all alone, sitting up there on the bandstand with my saxophone in my mouth. And then suddenly I saw Irena down below in a light blue dress and she smiled at me. Her smile pierced right through me and made my heart stop beating. She was dancing beautifully on her lovely legs and keeping Zdenek, who was grinning like an idiot and clumping around like an elephant, a good arm’s length away. But he was still holding on. And I’d hoped they’d shot him. No such luck. He could go off and leave her a thousand times but he’d always turn up again. He’d always pop back up again like a demon or the devil, with his buckteeth and chapped lips and Irena would always drop everything and run right back to him. No. I was the one who, finally, had only dreamed and imagined how it would be, and he didn’t dream or even need to dream since he had it all right there. Finally, he was the only one who got anywhere with Irena, and she undressed for him and slept with him and loved him, and she was fond of me. Fond of me. That was all and there was nothing to be done about it. All I could do was to be grateful she was at least fond of me. I got up, gravely raised my sax to my lips and sobbed out a melody, an improvisation in honour of victory and the end of the war, in honour of this town and all its pretty girls, and in honour of a great, abysmal, eternal, foolish, lovely love. And I sobbed about everything, about my own life, about the SS men they’d executed and about poor Hrob, about Irena who didn’t understand and who was slowly but surely approaching her own destruction in some sort of marriage, about youth which had ended and about the break-up that had already begun, about our band which wouldn’t even get together like this again, about evenings when we’d played under kerosene lamps and about the world that lay ahead of us, about all the beautiful girls I’d been in love with – and I’d loved a lot of them, probably all of them – and about the sun. And out of the orange and saffron sunset clouds in the west a new and equally pointless life bent towards me, but it was good and I raised my glittering saxophone to face it and sang and spoke to that life out of its gilded throat, telling it that I’d accept it, that I’d accept everything that came my way because that was all I could do, and out of that flood of gold and sunlight, the girl bent towards me again, the girl I had yet to meet, and she caressed my cheek. The zootsuiters were dancing in front of the bandstand, kids I liked and whom I’d be leaving within the next few days since I’d be going away, going somewhere or other again, so I played for them and I thought about the same things I’d always thought about, about girls and about jazz and about that girl I was going to meet in Prague.