Pavel Kohout - The Widow Killer

“Or more?”

“Or more..”

He considered the matter quickly. However many she’d swallowed, her condition indicated that they had not yet dissolved completely. There was only one thing to do.

“Get up! Up!”

He grabbed her by the hands and pulled her up forcefully.

“Ow! Brute!”

He hauled her over to the sink so as not to have to drag her down the stairs to the toilet.

“Put your finger down your throat!”

“Leave me alone!”

“Do it!”

“I won’t, you bastard!”

He stuck his own in. She bit him. Suppressing a scream, he managed to lock her in a vise grip with his left hand while forcing a toothbrush down her throat with his right.

At that moment she stopped resisting and drooped. It was all he could do to grab her with both hands around the waist before she collapsed, but she vomited obediently until he let her stop.

Then he laid her down on the bed again and sat next to her.

Her gray eyes slowly cleared and sharpened, but her mouth remained mute.

“Why?” he asked her. “For God’s sake, why?”

“That dream…,” she whispered, “where I died, you know. It was so awful that yesterday I got drunk… and today at noon I had an even worse one….”

“At noon?”

“I sleep constantly. What else can I do to keep from going mad?”

The unintended reproach stung him.

“And how was it worse?”

“They killed you. In front of me too. Then I woke up, and worst of all, I felt sure it had happened.”

He attempted a smile.

“And did they kill me?”

Almost, he acknowledged, but did not say it, amazed that she had experienced his death at the same moment it had actually touched him.

“No. But they will!”

There was such despair in her shout that he trembled, as if only now feeling that elemental fear he had missed as they counted off.

“What do you mean?”

“Buback…,” she answered weakly in that gruff voice which had captivated him in the German House shelter, “my love, you and I have about the same chance of surviving as two goldfish in a pike pond. Don’t you know that with each trip to and from I don’t know where, you put your head on the chopping block? And once you lose it, as you undoubtedly will, I’m lost as well. I wanted to escape what they’d do to me then….”

These were her most intimate fears, but he stubbornly rejected them. To accept them was to demolish the last barrier standing between man and death: hope.

“My love/’ he countered, addressing her with her own epithet, “it’s no news that our lives hang by a thread, nor that you’re worse off for it than I am. But our chances of getting out of here with our skins intact can’t be less than one in two. How could you condemn me to go on living when you die? What kind of a life would that be, without you? Let’s make an agreement: I won’t leave you again to go you don’t know where; I’ve learned that the best I can hope for is to save you alone, and that’s what I intend to do. I believe Morava will come for us in time and find a solution; in fact, I’m counting on it. And if he doesn’t ”

Then Meckerle will arrange it, he hesitated to say. He recalled the bloodstained bank clerk explaining awkwardly that he had no influence over the executions because State Secretary Frank had ordered them as retaliation for the shooting of imprisoned German soldiers. He hoped at least to spare her that.

“If he doesn’t come,” he said instead, “and they get me first, you’ll pull the trigger on your sweet pistol, agreed?”

“You’re right, love,” she said almost joyfully, yawning with exhaustion. “That way I can think of you right up till the end. But just now I’ll have a little nap. I still owe you something… lots, actually…. more than…”

The primary school was the usual solid structure from the mid-twenties: Two wings, boys’ and girls’, were linked at the back by a building with a gymnasium and large auditorium. At the front was a courtyard with heavy bars and a barred gate guarded by sentries. While Morava stood ignominiously on the opposite sidewalk under the malevolent glare of both youths, they admitted another group of Germans and their escort, who were also adorned with RG bands.What Morava had earlier dismissed as the invention of a few flag-waving patriots from Bartolom jská turned out to be a well-developed organization. Where had it come from in this part of the city, which until recently had been firmly under SS control?

A man in an old Czechoslovak Army lieutenant’s uniform and an accompanying sergeant of the former Protectorate Government Forces were turned away from the entrance shortly after he was. Spotting Morava, they approached him.

“Sir.” The officer saluted him. “We’ve been sent from city command to organize the concentration of German civilians as called for in the Hague Convention; once the battle ends, their deportation will be arranged. Could you direct the guards to let us in?”

“I’m sorry,” Morava said, “but I’m not wanted here either.”

“What’s that supposed to mean? And what’s the ’rG’?”

“I think it stands for Revolutionary Guards.”

“I’ve never heard of them. Who are they under?”

“I have no idea.”

A man came running across the schoolyard to the gate; from up close, Morava recognized the man who had brought him there, the leader of the RG escort. Seeing the uniforms, he hurried across the street to them. He was pale, and fear shone in his eyes.

“Please, do something!”

“What’s happening?”

“In there.. they’re.. beating and…”

For a moment he was unable to go on.

“Who?”

Mutely he pointed to his armband, slipping it off the sleeve of his leather jacket. Only then could he finish his sentence.

“… and killing….”

“What should we do?” the lieutenant asked helplessly.

“I’m expecting reinforcements,” Morava said, “but now I don’t know if there will be enough of them.”

A car swerved sharply into the street and stopped directly in front of the guards. Three armed men in camouflage with RG armbands got out, as did a tall man in a black overcoat and hat; sunken black eyes ruled the man’s thin face and black goatee. Why did he look familiar? Morava knew immediately: This was how he’d always imagined the medieval Czech martyr, Jan Hus. He stepped across the street.

“Hello,” he called, drawing their attention.

The four of them stopped.

“What do you want?” the smallest snarled, bristling; what he lacked in height he made up for in energy, like a coiled spring.

“Do you have access to this building?” Morava asked.

“Why?”

It sounded like a bark. The other two soldiers and the shaken man with the armband in his hand came to join Morava.

“The lieutenant is supposed to prepare the Germans for deportation, but can’t get into the building. They won’t even let me in.”

“They’re following orders. Which say: no servants of former regimes.”

For the first time in a long while Morava felt himself turn red with embarrassment; just like little Jan from the Bartered Bride, Beran had always laughed.

“I’m from the criminal police,” he defended himself, “and the lieutenant served the republic, not the Protectorate….”

“A republic of exploiters and capitulators,” the coil announced. “But its time is up, and yours is too. We’re the security forces of the future Czechoslovakia, where the workers will rule.”

The lieutenant had meanwhile collected himself.

“Czechoslovakia will remain a democracy, represented by President Bene and the government in Ko ice; I’m here at their orders. Are you planning a putsch, gentlemen?”