Pavel Kohout - The Widow Killer

Schörner’s heavy tanks would turn Pánkrac into an extensive operations base. From here they could roll over the barricades in the valley, opening a passage to the city center and onward to the west. Aside from sporadic fire from various directions, however, there was no noise at all, and even after twilight only advance men on motorcycles came through. They mentioned barricades sprouting in the villages and towns around Prague, saying the colonnades had had to detour around through fields. These could not have presented any real obstacles to such powerful equipment, and thus further rumors were born. The prevailing opinion was that the Americans were approaching, which made a German advance pointless. Kroloff eagerly spread that afternoon’s news: In his imagination the Protectorate was to be the launching point for a future western alliance, including the Reich, against the hydra of Communism.

“And that’s the secret weapon,” he kept repeating, “the truly brilliant secret weapon the Führer providentially left us!”

The headquarters was filled with commanders from various lower units. They had nothing to do beside organizing patrols; there was no word from the approaching army and the Prague division just checked in every hour to ask what was new. Buback thought of Grete, alone and helpless. It gave him an idea for how the officers could usefully fill their time. There were thousands of German civilians in Prague; why not concentrate the ones in this corner of the city under military control, at least until the army could guarantee their safe passage out or their right to remain?

His idea did not strike anyone’s fancy. None of the officers seemed eager to complicate his own life unless ordered to do so; not even Buback’s authority as a Gestapo emissary helped. It was Kroloff who dealt the plan a final blow. The Führer’s memory, he parroted, could be best honored by unflinching adherence to the principles of Total War. The German citizens of Prague had been offered the opportunity to arm themselves a long time ago. The ones who availed themselves of it must have realized that every German apartment here could become a fortress. The ones who failed to do so had only themselves to blame; they had cut themselves off from the fellowship of a brave warrior nation.

Buback reminded him about the German woman who had saved the armored transporters trapped in the web of suddenly nameless streets that afternoon. If any of her Czech neighbors had spotted her, she would pay dearly indeed. After all, they couldn’t expect civilians in their apartments to behave like soldiers under fire, if only because they had no unified command or clear orders.

Aha, Kroloff trumpeted triumphantly, but a civilian evacuation would confirm the Czechs’ false hope that the Reich was capitulating, and could provoke a real uprising — the recent attempts by extremists had fortunately been just a pale imitation. After all, they’d just learned that one airborne torpedo had put an end to the unfortunate episode with the radio!

Buback did not prolong the argument. Better to preserve his authority for a real crisis situation. He would have to meet with Morava or Beran again to warn them of the problem; the haunting image of a murderer’s holiday, which Grete had used, was seared into his brain. Grete! He had to see her, to put his mind at ease.

Two highly unpleasant events put a temporary end to the confused discussion. The same Czech announcer who had recently been cut off in midword during the successful German air raid now unexpectedly resurfaced, apparently from a replacement studio. And the telephone stopped working in the local pub the German command had occupied. The Czechs therefore controlled the city switchboard. Buback seized the moment.

“You stay here as long as necessary,” he ordered Kroloff. “I’ll try to get to Bredovská. We’ve completed our mission, but I don’t like the fact that we don’t have orders covering various possible developments. What’s important is not which of us is right, but what sort of general directives have been worked out in the meanwhile.”

“They won’t bring you back through at night, and there may already be more than one barricade in the valley.”

Buback was amused to see Kroloff s earlier outbursts of toughness give way to fear.

“I realize that. The surest way back is on foot.”

“But there’s a curfew.”

“All the better. I’ll take an escort as far as our outpost sentries. On the other side I’ll blend in in civilian garb.”

“How will you get back tomorrow?”

“The same way, unless a corridor has been freed up by then. You should know, Kroloff, why I was transferred here: I’m originally from Prague.”

The skull head was dubiousness incarnate, but as Buback’s subordinate, he had to accept the decision. His superior had them fetch the headquarters’ map of the district, which had the outposts marked. As he had assumed, the furthest was at the edge of Kav í Hory, not far from the little house. Once there, he nodded to his escort and to the sentries sheltering themselves against the beginning rain, turned up his overcoat collar, and set off into the darkness.

He shoved his work papers into his right sock, on the inside of the ankle and then into his shoe; the pass from Beran he hid in his left one. Just in case, he took the safety off his pistol. Swiftly he strode down the empty streets with their low houses. He stopped next door to check he was truly alone, and only then approached the house and pressed the bell as she’d requested: three short rings and a long one. He was caught off guard when the door opened immediately; swiftly he reached for his gun, but then he smelled her perfume, felt her hands pulling him inside, and heard her whispering voice.

At his request, she locked the door in the dark, but she did not let go of him. Before he could speak again, she pulled rather than led him up to the attic, telling him what she had been through. For hours she hadn’t been able to sleep, but neither could she wake up: Agitation followed exhaustion and then exhaustion overcame agitation again until she fell into a strange trance in which she could not move, but her visions seemed absolutely real. As if in a fever, she saw her whole life and finally her death, because suddenly she had become Jitka Modrá, who had so trustingly exchanged fates with her.

“Suddenly I was the one who was fatally wounded here, but I wasn’t dead — you just couldn’t see it, and I was there as you put me in the coffin and you didn’t notice as I tried desperately to give you a sign, and then the lid slammed down and they banged the nails in and they picked me up and lowered me in and finally I managed to scream, just as the soil drummed down on the lid, so I made one last effort — I gathered all my strength and swung upright so forcefully the lid flew open and I tried to stand up in a hail of dirt, but I was too late, you see, it took away my breath and consciousness, and suddenly it’s all over, but my head hurts and I’m standing at the door and you’re ringing. .. Where have you been so long, love?”

When he found out she had not eaten at all, he wanted to fetch her something from the stores in the cellar, but she went with him and would not let go of him, as if drawing energy from his touch, holding him by the hand even as he sliced the rock-hard bread and opened military tins of sausage and cheese. On the way upstairs his foot hit an empty gin bottle he had found in the judge’s bathroom as they fled. He realized she had drunk it while waiting for him and then fallen asleep by the front door.

He forced her to eat and meanwhile decided to stay until morning; it would be easier and safer to get to the center during daylight anyway. When he undressed and lay down next to her, he felt for the first time that she was not interested in him as a man; she clung to him as if she were freezing and only animal warmth could save her.