Pavel Kohout - The Widow Killer

Morava knew how deceptive an idyll like this could be. Since their March expedition to Moravia, the images of a powerful German army massing to the east had never left him. He sensed that despite all the defeats of the past two years, there was enough destructive strength in those soldiers to turn the Protectorate into a vast wasteland. In the upcoming conflict of responsibilities, how come he hadn’t chosen his personal ones? Why wasn’t he on one of those final trains right now, bringing his mother back here? Why hadn’t he found her and Jitka’s parents a place to rent long ago, maybe with farmers outside Prague? Was it the unholy sum it would cost? And what was he saving for, if not to protect his own family? Why hadn’t he refused Beran right off?

Out of solidarity with him? Should it take precedence over solidarity with his family? Or out of fear for himself? But Beran had seen to that when he claimed the case as his own cross to bear. So then? Had Morava’s gloomy craft become so crucial to him that he would risk endangering his loved ones for it?

Yes, he answered himself, but not for the sake of his career. Catch that monster, Jitka had told him; he frightens me more than Hitler does. He understood what she meant. Adolf Hitler was the product of a deranged nation’s political will, horrible but explicable, and therefore defeatable. The unknown and unpredictable widow slaughterer stripped the thin veneer of civilization from mankind and threatened to return humanity to its savage prehistory.

The fisherman rowed closer; he lifted both lines from the water, opened an old can, and spindled wriggling earthworms on the hooks. Then he flung his arm wide and the floats whistled down between the dinghy and the shore. The man in the boat waved to him, but Morava just stared dumbly back.

He had his idea.

All the heads of department marched into Meckerle’s office. They ran out of chairs; the assistants brought more in from the anteroom and the hallway as well. There was no food, no one thought to light a cigarette, nobody spoke, everyone sat clenched as stiff as a ramrod. A puppet theater, Buback thought to himself. It seemed inconceivable to him, but not long ago he had been one of those figurines.

Yes, Grete had freed him from servitude to the war. True, it was their unceasing and unflagging lovemaking that bound them together — interrupted by her stories, which merged with his deliriously exhausted dreams — but he realized that at some point he had dropped out of this society of soldiers, and now he was hers alone.

Had she truly freed him? Or had she deprived him of his foundations, his sources of equilibrium? She had exposed him — for better or worse — to emotions and passions; had she also transformed him into an animal, unprincipled, unwilling, and probably even incapable of defending an ideal?

But without her, without the woman who had stepped unexpectedly into Hilde’s shoes, what sort of ideals would he have to defend? The ones that had deformed German culture so completely? Weren’t the murderers sitting here today all the more monstrous for the fact that they massacred innocent victims left and right from the comfort of their desks, often by telephone? Without moving his neck he surveyed them in his peripheral vision, face by face. Was he the same as them? Probably not, so long as it seemed more important to him that he spend the next night with Grete.

The way she had detached him from Hilde was a more serious matter. A month ago, he had convinced himself that his dead wife had sent him the Czech girl as her own reincarnation, to cure his loneliness. Now he felt equally sure that she would not approve of Grete; Hilde would have found the actress’s emotionally turbulent life contemptible. After all, it even bothered him. But why? Hadn’t he become part of it?

The colonel appeared in the doorway, and all present snapped to attention. Meckerle whipped his right hand into the German salute and simultaneously motioned them to sit down. Then, as if he were alone in the office, he began to study the papers in the folder an assistant had just placed on his desk.

Buback remembered he had a letter for Meckerle in his breast pocket, and felt a new pang. Why had she left the colonel, anyway? And had she, in fact? What was she writing him about? The benefits of her relationship with Meckerle were evident; surely it was only a matter of time before the rift was healed and he, Buback, would become another of her episodes, one that would not even yield a good story. Advance nostalgia overwhelmed him.

“Gentlemen!” Meckerle slammed the leather binder shut with an audible crack. “The final battle has begun. Last night the whole eastern front shifted, from the Balkans to the Baltic. Vienna has fallen, and it seems the main defensive line on the Oder has been broken. There is no doubt that the main goal of the offensive is Berlin.”

The meeting’s participants neither moved nor breathed. Everyone except Buback seemed to know already. Had Grete’s wiles even dulled his interest in the final days of the Reich (which might be his own as well)? Maybe it was time for him to loosen Grete’s grip before she became a drug he couldn’t give up.

“From this day forward,” Meckerle pronounced, “the military leaders are following the Führer’s strategic plan. Our goal is the defense of Bohemia and Bavaria as the launching point for our final victory. Mitte’s army units have enough men, military machinery, munitions, and fuel to fulfill this historic task. Our job here is to insure absolute tranquillity behind the front lines. We will not declare martial law, as it might provoke the more militant domestic elements to resistance; nevertheless, it is in force from now on. Every act of sabotage or incitement hostile to the Reich — whether directed against soldiers or civilians — must be nipped in the bud, suppressed, and punished with Draconian severity.”

A blow. This time everyone twitched. Meckerle’s elbows had again come down on the tables. Buback’s stomach cramped. Yes, no wonder Grete liked this Tarzan. .. He regained control when his brain came to his aid. The Empire was dying, and he was jealous! Of a blabbering Gestapo agent and a woman whose life creed was infidelity!

“I want to warn all of you — and you must warn your subordinates as well — that a line of troops lies between us and the western front. Many will find this situation tempting, but anyone suspected of desertion will be swiftly sentenced in court to death by hanging. With no pardons! Prague is the primary railway and highway center of Bohemia, and we will defend it if necessary, even at the cost of its total annihilation. Why should it fare better than our lovely Dresden did?”

Buback remembered how Meckerle and his wife had described the destruction of their villa. A few hours later, the mysterious woman who sat next to him that night turned his life upside down. Wasn’t it time for him to become his own master again, before his freedom became a new sort of slavery?

Before he could think this assertion through, he was dragged into the sudden motions and sharp noises all around him. Force of habit catapulted him out of his chair along with the rest, who were hastening to flee Meckerle’s office. He moved along with the flow; having missed Meckerle’s last sentence completely, he had no idea what the order was. Then he heard it again.

“You stay, Mr. Buback.”

The head of the Prague Gestapo occasionally respected Buback’s civilian status and addressed him according to the old ways.

“Your order, Standartenführer,” Buback responded.

“Did you give her my letter?”

The last officer was closing the door behind him; the two of them were left alone. His boss mostly seemed embarrassed.

“Of course. ..”