Pavel Kohout - The Widow Killer

INCLUDING ME!

He shoved his own papers into the man’s pocket and repeated his new name to himself.

LUDVÍK ROUBÍNEK.

Now he turned with renewed interest to the enemy. Pressed against the alley wall closest to the German he glimpsed the corner uphill where he had started. Those chicken-shits still didn’t dare come after him. But he didn’t need them; actually, he’d rather take care of the German himself and just hoped the Kraut wouldn’t run away like the Hungarians did at Komárno.

He HAD THAT TASTE again and intended to satisfy it. He called out to his prey.

“You there!”

The air vibrated with the shots and detonations still resounding from the radio building. He shouted louder, and in German.

“Sie dort!”

No answer.

“Your men won’t help you. They’re surrounded. Give up!”

Silence, humming with the nearby battle.

“I have a grenade; I’ll count to three. Put your weapon on the trash can, or it’s all over. Don’t be a fool and you’ll live to tell the tale. One… two…”

MOTHER, HELP ME, don’t let him call my bluff.

Metal clanged against metal. A submachine gun lay on the garbage can, gently rocking on the bent top of the lid.

YOU’rE DIVINE! But what about him?

Two fiercely trembling hands appeared. Slowly a cap and then a head emerged. The haggard kid in the SS uniform might have been twenty. BUT HE’s A GERMAN, SHE said sternly. AND YOU’rE A CZECH!

Yes, yes! He raised the hand with the pistol and went as close as he could, until only the garbage can divided them. The barrel touched the gray-green cloth in the region of the heart. No, that would be too fast a death for a German pig. The soldier licked his lips, but did not move when the gun slid diagonally down to his belly.

He’d give him time.

TIME TO REPENT.

Iwas waiting till I knew it was you, love,” Grete explained; he had been banging on the bolted door, but she would not open it until he began to call her name. “No, I’m not afraid, not in the least; I’m just a bit terrified, actually. But since you wanted me to go somewhere I wouldn’t go, and I decided instead to be terrified by your side, I really can’t complain. Tell me what’s going on; suddenly the radio only speaks Czech!”

Litera had explained why as they were leaving.

“They’re fighting over it.”

“And that means…”

“Probably the beginning of the uprising. And maybe of the assault on Prague.”

“Aha. And what about us?”

“I warned the Czechs, Grete. And I want to keep it up as long as I can.

“Good idea. What will they do for us in return?”

Her selfish directness made him doubt his reasons for changing sides again. She flared up at him as if reading his thoughts.

“Don’t try to be Saint Erwin, love. Since you’ve decided to save yourself, save both of us in the bargain! Why should the only Germans to survive the war be the criminals?”

“Morava offered me an apartment,” he responded. “The one where you and his wife… where it happened. Can you bear it there until we can see what comes next?”

“Will you stay with me?”

“I’ll do everything I can to stop in for you at least once a day….”

“Aha. ..”

She sounded disappointed. He wondered disconsolately how to respond if she suggested escaping together again.

“When?” she asked instead.

“Right away!” he said, relieved. “Pack what you need and I’ll bring all the groceries from the house.”

“What do you need?”

“Some underwear.”

Like a seasoned traveling artist she was ready before he was. They packed the baggage space with two suitcases of personal effects, two bags of food, and a rolled-up blanket in a fresh plaid cover with a pillow — after all, she opined, they couldn’t sleep in the same one that poor girl…

Then he remembered his pistol.

On the threshold, she kissed him.

“May we never be less happy than we are now!”

As it turned out, they had left Little Berlin at the last possible moment. At the intersection below the last house a Wehrmacht truck in the hands of the insurgents had blocked the roadway except for a narrow passage. A man in the moth-eaten uniform of a former Czechoslovak Army first lieutenant was directing a handful of civilians with tricolors pinned on. All of them had rifles.

The police driver and car satisfied the lieutenant; he saluted Buback as well, who was sitting with Grete in the back. Down by Stromovka Park a German guard unit had surrendered a small arsenal, he told them; they’d found a pile of guns there. They’d been sent here to comb through the villas, checking for any treacherous “werewolves“— German storm troopers — who might be hiding there.

“Take care,” Litera advised him. “The criminals will be right behind the war heroes. Everything’s public property now.”

“I’m no policeman!” The first lieutenant seemed almost insulted.

“And our men aren’t soldiers, but unlike you they’re already in battle. Happy hunting.”

He hit the gas and grinned at Buback like an ally.

“Mothballed soldiers!” Litera sniffed contemptuously. “We haven’t seen the last of ’em.”

On Mendel Bridge, where tar-paper signs had restored the Czech painter Mánes’s name, the crew of a German light cannon tried to drive them back. Buback took care of it. He easily negotiated passage around the large-caliber machine gun at the National Theater.

Litera slowed down again at the railway bridge to let two city buses move aside; they were blocking riverside traffic and the way south to Vy ehrad. Prague seemed to be divided into Czech and German islands. On the former, celebration was giving way to resistance activities, while the latter were empty spaces guarded by jittery soldiers.

“I see we make a good pair,” Litera said to Buback after his performance at the theater, “so long as we don’t pull out the wrong piece of paper!”

Beran’s apparent involvement and Buback’s miraculously good Czech instilled in Litera a measure of goodwill toward the German, which was now growing into approval.

Grete was quiet as a mouse the whole trip, but the anxious grip of her fingers told him her true state of mind. At each control point he had to free himself from it forcibly, only to return tenderly afterward.

Only a few nights ago she had been amorous, uninhibited, an apparently superficial consumer of her own existence. In this dark hour, however, Grete’s character seemed suddenly different, contradicting her own confessions. Now she would suffer all the more as he abandoned her to an unknown fate for an indeterminate time, but she did not use any of the feminine weapons arrayed at her beck and call to force him to the decision she must be hoping for. Or would she try it at the last moment?

They arrived. He could feel Grete tremble at the sight of the house. The kitchen windows had not been repaired, but someone had boarded them up, nailing the planks an inch apart, so there would be light inside during the day. Litera carried their baggage in alone. The two of them shouldn’t be seen much in public, he said; there were only a couple of old geezers living around here, but just to be on the safe side! When he disappeared into the hall with the first load, Grete had her last chance.

Instead, however, she kept her grip on his fingers and stared motionlessly ahead. Once Litera had taken in the last bundle and was waiting inside to show her in, she kissed Buback gently on the lips and, surprisingly, made the sign of the cross on his forehead.

“Come back when you can, love. And ring or knock the fate theme: da da da dum…!”