Pavel Kohout - The Widow Killer

“Thank you, Herr Oberkriminalrat,” she added.

He took a step toward intimacy.

“Do you think you could forget about that title?”

She flashed him a heartfelt smile.

“Thank you, Herr Buback.”

“Erwin. ..”

She nodded.

“I know.”

He did not insist and tried instead to draw her gently into a conversation that might bring them closer. In decent German she told him about her family and her youth — as she said with her still childlike lisp — in a land where several languages met; her description matched the one he had heard two days earlier as they drove through that very countryside.

“So you’re from the same area as Mr. Morava?”

“Yes…” she answered more shyly than usual. “In peacetime we would undoubtedly have met a long time ago at socials; the war saw to it that we only met here, in Prague. He even speaks the same way; there’s a lot of Slovak in our dialect.”

For a couple of seconds he weighed addressing her now in Czech, so her speech could leave its narrow channel of foreign words and fill in his picture of her personality. Immediately he rejected the idea. He was acting like a college student smitten by a first crush!

The food interrupted Buback, letting him marvel at her long fingers holding the silverware with an unusual grace, at the small mouth, which barely moved as she ate; at the slight tilt of her head toward her left shoulder, causing her hair to cast an artful shadow on her right temple. Involuntarily he remembered Marleen Baumann’s dramatic lines, arousing an anticipation of revolutionary acts, while this face radiated spiritual equilibrium, the sort that brings peace and happiness. I can’t keep up this act for long, he realized; I’ll end up telling her the truth.

And why not? Why not try it? What was he risking except a polite refusal? Wouldn’t he lose far more if he let this opportunity slide by? Why not transform intent into action?

I don’t know how it happened, my dear young lady; I know it goes against all the rules of this age, but in spite of it I love you. I’ve loved only once in my life, but my feelings were all the stronger for it; I loved my wife until the moment she died, and afterward as well — I thought that a love like that left no room for another. Then I saw you and from that moment I’ve known that her death made my love for you even deeper and stronger. I truly believe that she’s sent you to me, and I implore you: overcome the revulsion you feel for me, a German. Hear me out, as a man who has never knowingly harmed another and who has tried amid the madness to maintain an island of justice. As proof I’ll put an end to this charade by speaking to you in your native language, which is mine as well. What do you say?

He must have been staring silently at her with such intentness that she finally asked, “Is something wrong?”

The question tore him from his musings. Confusion filled her eyes. He had no idea how long his reverie had lasted. In the meantime, she had finished eating. He placed his silver on his half-full plate and tried to gain time for a good-faith effort.

“I’m sorry…. Would you like some dessert?”

She looked him straight in the eye again when she answered.

“No, thank you. It was very kind of you to invite me for such a nice dinner with such good news, but it’s late already. My fiance would worry.”

Did you say who it was?” Morava interrupted her tensely. She shook her head. “That was enough; he called the waiter over immediately.”

He forced himself to laugh.

“I guess everyone falls in love with you.” Jan!

He wanted to hug her, but for once she would not let him. He saw that Buback was still uppermost in her mind, and it irritated him.

“You served it to him straight up, and in spite of that he still drove you right home, kissed your hand, and said good night, everything as it should be; why let it eat at you?”

“What if he leaves my dad in jail…?”

“He’s not the extortionist type. No, I think your father’s coming home.”

“I don’t know why I told him,” she continued to fret. “He’ll find out it’s you in no time.”

“So? Fortunately that’s not a capital offense yet.”

“He could harm you some other way.”

He tried to reassure himself, so he could reassure her as well. “Jitka, my love, there’s a decent chance he has other plans for me, which don’t allow for personal revenge.”

“What kind?”

He decided to risk letting her in on Beran’s suspicions.

“And therefore it’s entirely possible,” he said, finishing his brief summary, “that his interest in you is part of the game as well.”

Up till now she had been nodding sympathetically, but this point she rejected.

“That’s not the way it’s played, Jan. After all, he didn’t say anything; he just looked. And he was completely lost… You’re right, though, that’s his business, and I’ll just act normally. But please, watch out for yourself!”

They both heard a car approaching that caught their attention as it braked out front. Jitka jumped up, horrified.

“It’s him!”

Her fear galvanized him. “Then I’ll get the door.”

She slipped around the kitchen table and whispered despairingly, “Go upstairs, I can manage him. Please!”

The bell rang.

“There’s no point,” he objected. “He’ll hear me.”

“He knows I’m not single. But he doesn’t have to know who my fiance is just yet. Don’t worry, I just don’t see any reason.. Run along, I can handle it!”

The doorbell rang again.

“Hello,” called a familiar voice. “Hello, hello!”

They both went to open it. The superintendent had eyes only for Morava.

“Am I glad you’re here. I couldn’t track Buback down. Grab your notebook and give her a kiss good night. He’s done it again — twice.”

Kroloff sent an envelope with the news to be stuck under Erwin Buback’s door early that evening, but the chief inspector had not returned.

When the door of the suburban house swung shut behind Jitka Modrá, he had the same feeling as last year, when an unfamiliar voice impersonally informed him that he was now alone in the world. It was neither despair nor regret; instead, he felt his old emptiness fill him again. He examined himself coolly as if from outside. Yes, this was his true, unretouched, unaltered state: solitude of body and soul. How had he let himself be swayed by such absurd feelings?

However, he could not return to his post-Antwerp method of survival. Something fundamental in him had changed. He had no desire to mope over a glass in the German House bar and go home to his impersonal one-room apartment. A strong need, buried these last twenty years, awoke in him. Dismissing his driver on Wenceslas Square, he strode energetically across the empty city center. He gave the top bell a long ring despite the risk that she might have company. It was a while before a tired voice answered.

“Yes?”

“Erwin Buback,” he announced, sounding more decisive than he felt. “May I come up?”

“Of course,” she said, just as abruptly. “One moment.”

A minute later a key wrapped in newsprint landed next to him on the sidewalk.

By the time the elevator delivered him up to the top floor of the 1930s building, she looked ready for an evening on the town in her shaggy white dressing gown. The door of the cozy attic apartment closed behind him.

“So, the great Meckerle’s jealousy no longer makes you quake in your boots?” she asked.

He decided to be frank. “I didn’t come to sleep with you.”

“Fabulous.” She laughed. “I’ve always longed for a girlfriend.”

Her miraculous appearance was quickly explained. She had just returned, exhausted, from a trip to the German troops; her troupe of opera singers performed operetta tunes for them every day, and she had not yet removed her makeup. He drained a bottle of champagne practically on his own, as if dying of thirst. When she realized he was absorbed in his own problems, she opened another one (apparently from the colonel’s reserves), put some wild American music on the gramophone, and excused herself to go shower.