Pavel Kohout - The Widow Killer

Those endless seconds yesterday afternoon, when he thought the murderer had killed Grete, shook Buback’s emotions down to the very core of his being. Until that moment Grete was just what she had said: a wartime lover, linked to him by loneliness and a sudden flame of passion meant to cremate the dead in both of them. The threat of losing her opened a new dimension inside him. An icy emptiness surrounded him, as if he’d stepped across death’s threshold while he was still alive. And when he found the other woman was the victim, he felt an almost inhumanly cruel relief.

He had instantly regained control, trying to support the young Czech with his burden. Still, Buback was still deeply grateful that this time fate had passed over him. If Jitka Modrá had given him the hope that even after Hilde he might love again, Grete Baumann had fulfilled it.

He now knew that he was not here to participate in this dirty and hopeless war any longer, but rather to protect his love and lead her to safety. But how…?

The man who woke at five A.M. at the bedside of a dead Jitka Modrá was a completely different Jan Morava than the one who fell asleep beside her while she was still alive.

His nighttime despair and his contention with God were gone. He helped the nurses wash her and dress her in a clean white shirt, accompanied her on the stretcher to the pathology lab, kissed her on her still-warm lips, and then waited for an hour like an errand boy in a hallway reeking of disinfectant before he was permitted to see the examination results.

“Death from hemorrhaging into the mediastinum after a puncture wound to the aorta.“

Litera, who discovered him there, was the first person caught off guard. Before he could express his sympathy, Morava reeled off his plan for the day’s excursions, as if this were a morning strategy session after an ordinary night.

His other colleagues in the department found a man unchanged in appearance and demeanor from the day before. He returned their sympathetic handshakes just the way he would have at daily meetings; anyone who dared to express condolences got at most a nod.

The women at Bartolom jská, confirmed in their rejection of Operation Decoy, were especially shocked. Could this sorry young man really be that insensitive? The men were marginally impressed by his self-control, but it still seemed unnatural to them.

Morava understood what was happening. During that short nap by her bed, he had died along with Jitka. She had then sent him back to the living world to complete his task. During this temporary resurrection, he had resolved not to let anything impede his work.

Maybe it was the combined spiritual strength of all his ancestors, forged by unending blows of fate, that so mercifully numbed him. Otherwise, he knew, he would have gone mad.

He would have cried like a child, howled like a beast, stopped eating, given up sleeping; soon he would have set off aimlessly, half awake, half asleep, down the dark streets of a city ever closer to the front until, heedless of warnings, he would probably have been shot by German guards.

Instead, he resolved to forget that for three months there had been a woman he fell asleep and woke up with, constantly conscious of their child growing inside her, and decided to be only what he had been before: a criminal detective investigating the murders of Maru ka Kubílková of Brno, Elisabeth, Baroness of Pomerania, Barbora Pospíchalová, Hedvika Horáková, Marta Pavlátová, Jana Kavanová, Robert Joná , Franti ek ebesta, and Jitka Modrá.

He waited for Beran in his anteroom as if there had never been a third person there.

“Since we now know his identity,” he began with no preamble, “we can disband the special team. But I’d like to direct the investigation, and I want to start in Plze .”

“Shouldn’t you get some sleep?”

“I’ve slept three months away already. I have to catch up.”

At first he didn’t know where he was. He felt refreshed, but all around was deepest darkness. Gradually he collected his thoughts until he could stand and grope his way to the blackout shades. A murky light passed listlessly through the dirty window and curtain. He thought of the neighbor who did the cleaning. Apparently she spent more time on the bed than in the rest of the apartment, except he couldn’t really imagine them…

He remembered the ferociousness with which his host had spoken about the Germans, soldiers and civilians alike, servants of the Reich sent to Prague and those who had been here for generations. From “exclude them” he’d progressed to “expel them” and then “exterminate them,” and he always added, “no exceptions!”

KRAUTS FOR HIM ARE LIKE THOSE WHORES FOR ME!

This discovery fascinated him. He had to learn more. The empty bathroom didn’t surprise him; the guy would certainly have snuck out through the living room so as not to wake him up. But the empty kitchen made his blood run cold. He tore into the front hall in his underwear and pressed the apartment door handle down. Locked. He dashed to the window. Mezzanine, at least six meters of sheer wall.

So, A TRAP!

Once again that awful feebleness overpowered him, the one he thought he had banished the day before on the strafed train; he could thank HER for it. As a child he’d developed it when he’d been IN UNLOVE. “Unlove” was HER worst punishment; SHE wouldn’t speak to him and would look right through him, as if he were thin air. He felt so abandoned, so humiliated that… he almost.. hated HER! Once he’d grown up, he confessed this to HER, and SHE was horrified that she’d made him feel that way. SHE never did it after that, but he never got rid of the reaction; in a crisis it would always sneak up on him and make the situation even worse.

WHAT NOW?

He realized in a panic that the guy was a provocateur and had gone to denounce him. At least he had time to break out and disappear! With shaking hands he put on his shirt and pants and prowled around the small apartment like a hunting dog until he sniffed out what he was looking for: A hatchet lay behind the top-fed wood stove. He slipped it under the handle of the front door and got ready to pry it open when he heard steps and the clink of keys. Fully on guard again, he sprang into the corner, where the open door would conceal him, raised the ax above his head, and waited.

The runt saw him and stopped dead in his tracks. His usual bovine smile turned to a desperate grimace, and he dropped his keys and string bag on the ground (fortunately there were only potatoes and bread in it).

“You ass!” his guest exploded as soon as he had slammed the door with his foot. “Didn’t you have orders?”

“I just… I thought___” He pointed pitifully at the floor. “I thought

Fd make you—”

“You entered my unit of your own free will; you’ll follow my orders to the letter! How was I to know you weren’t a traitor?”

Only now did he feel the pistol pressing against him in his pocket. Why was he waving an ax around when he could just as easily have shot? Shooting’s like riding a bicycle, Sergeant Králik had always said; you never forget how!

“I almost split your skull open so I wouldn’t alert the whole house!”

“Forgive me…. I’ll never, ever… I swear…!”