The Cowards (21 page)

‘Anyhow, so there I was sauntering along behind Trudy and the fat one and I was wearing a great pair of shoes with thick white rubber soles and my pants were so tight I could almost feel them stretching. On went the girls with me right behind them. They stopped in front of shop windows and I was biding my time, waiting for the fat one to finally go into some store so I could talk to Trudy. But they just kept going along arm in arm and didn’t split up. Then all of a sudden, they turned and headed back towards me. Trudy frowned and looked stiff as a spinster when I said, “
Guten Tag
,” and sailed right past me without a word. That cooled me off a bit. I didn’t want to make
a big scene. So I decided I’d better just take it in my stride and so I walked on a little and then turned, too. I tailed them for about half an hour. Every once in a while Trudy would look back, spot me, scowl, and then face front again. I had a bad scare once when two officers suddenly came out of a store – big guys, with Iron Crosses, spiffy uniforms, super-Teutons. They stopped to chat with the girls and Trudy turned and gave me such a dirty look I thought, oh, oh, she’s going to tell the officers, and I thought maybe I’d better take off fast. Nothing happened, though, and I was glad I hadn’t run away because that must have impressed her. In fact, I think that was probably the main reason she finally talked to me after all.

‘It was in front of the movie theatre. The two officers said good-bye to them,
heiled
Hitler, and clicked their heels. There was this big picture poster of Hans Albers in front of the theatre and I saw Trudy saying something to the fat one, who answered
“Gut”
and went into the lobby. As soon as she was gone, I headed straight over to Trudy, who spun around like she’d just been waiting for me to try. When I came up to her, before I could get a word out, she said, “Why are you following me?” in a funny tone of voice – not so much unfriendly as sort of sad or reproving. “
Ich liebe Sie
,” I said promptly, but she didn’t say a word. “
Ich liebe Sie
,” I went on. “I’m madly in love with you and think of you all the time.” And still she didn’t say anything. It was getting kind of embarrassing for me because my German wasn’t so great that it couldn’t get worse, especially when there was only this one thing to talk about. Then, just when I’d run out of words and had stopped talking too, she looked at me and spoke in that patient voice of hers, using the same clichés as the night before. “
Schauen Sie
,” she said, “
es hat wirklich keinen Zweck
. I believe you do really like me, but, really, there’s just no point.” I gave her a passionate look and stepped in closer and said,
“Sagen Sie mir, ist es wirklich die Rasse
? Only
die Rasse? Nur die Nation?”
but this time she didn’t react like a fanatic Nazi the way she had the night before and she answered calmly, “
Ja
,” and I said, “It’s that important?” Again she said, “
Ja
,” very short and sweet, looking at me patiently and sympathetically, as if she was sort
of sorry for me. I took her hand and said – and it seemed to me it sounded better in German than in Czech, or maybe this time I really meant it – I said, or rather sighed, as they say in novels,
“Ich muss Sie sehen! Ich muss Sie sprechen!”
She jerked her hand away fast and looked around and in a quick whisper said, “
Das ist unmöglich
,” but I went right on. “
Ich muss, ich muss, bitte, bitte
, otherwise I’ll go mad.” She made a face and all of a sudden her eyes didn’t look so sure any more; she kept on glancing around nervously and again, but even quieter this time, she said,
“Nein, es geht nicht, wirklich nicht,”
which fired me up again and after I’d panted out a few more of those urgent
bitte, bitte’s
all at once she said, “
Gut, ich komme
, but only once, we’ve got to get this cleared up.” Then she glanced around again. The fat one was coming back now so she said quickly, “At the corner, tomorrow night at eight!” Then she turned around and called to her friend, “
Also, hast du’s?
” and they linked arms. I knew which corner she meant.

‘I just stood there and watched them and I felt wonderful, that kind of conquering feeling you always get when a girl says she’ll go out with you, when a girl you’ve made up your mind you really want to make says yes. It’s always the same feeling and what comes of it all depends on how things turn out. And I admit I didn’t have any idea how that date was going to turn out, a bad jolt to a guy’s self-confidence. But that wasn’t the only jolt, since that wasn’t so serious. It was all my ideas about people and about the world that got knocked around, too. I mean, so once more I’d seen that basically everybody’s pretty much the same. All right. But on the other hand, what do they do? They fall for something so dumb they let themselves be pushed around, they let their lives get so screwed up that, well, that a guy with feelings and ideas like mine simply couldn’t believe it if he hadn’t seen it for himself.

‘I waited at the corner for her. It was one of those starry nights again but pretty windy so the streets were nearly deserted. She appeared in the gate with typical German punctuality and the Kraut with the bayonet saluted, an unofficial flirt salute, I guess, because he grinned at her and she grinned back at him and then walked straight towards me, putting on
her gloves as she came. I stayed put. I didn’t go out to meet her because I was pretty well hidden in the shadows and figured, with that Kraut around, maybe she wouldn’t like me racing out to pick her up, letting everybody know I had a date with her. So I stood there waiting in the shadows, and when she got there I took off my hat and said,
“Guten Abend,”
and she nodded and said,
“Na kommen Sie,”
and stuck her hands in her coat pockets without even stopping and kept right on going. This sort of threw me off balance, but I put my hat back on and caught up with her. So there we were, walking along side by side. “Where’re we going?” I asked, and when she said it was all the same to her I suggested the island. She said, “
Na gut
,” and I was glad because there’s no place like the island for the kind of thing I had in mind. And now – though I may have had my doubts before – I was absolutely convinced she’d have to not just surrender but completely capitulate. Then suddenly it struck me that I hadn’t introduced myself yet and neither had she so I told her my name and naturally she absolutely couldn’t get it straight so I had to repeat it three times. Then she told me hers was Trudy Krause. It probably sounds pretty awful to you, and there’s no getting around it, it is one hell of a name. But that’s only because German is such an awful language. If the Germans were all as dried up and full of belches as their names and language are they’d really be in sad shape. But this Trudy, she really made up for her horrible name and – objectively speaking and putting all prejudice aside – she was every bit as pretty as Deanna Durbin, for instance. As far as feminine beauty went, she had the very same quality. She was a woman, even though she was a Nazi. What’s more, she was a German woman and I just couldn’t believe, then anyway, that this could make her all that different from other girls, and from me. Instead, it seemed to me that her being a bit different only added to the fun, that being a foreigner she had an exotic charm, and even to this day I don’t believe a German’s really all that different or that this difference had to get in our way. I believe it didn’t
have
to, but I also know it did.

‘We crossed the iron bridge over to the island, a classic moon looking in through the trusses, the water below rushing over
the weir, and the willows on the island rustling and whispering.

‘ “Trudy,” I said when we were on the path with the black shadows changing to moonlight and then back to shadows again,
“Ich liebe Sie”
and I took hold of her arm. At first she didn’t say anything so I went on, telling her in my broken German that I didn’t know quite how to explain it but that as soon as I’d seen her I felt suddenly … and all that junk you usually say in situations like that. Then we went over to a bench under a big weeping willow and the bench was almost hidden under the leaves and things were looking very promising. Trudy said we should sit down and so we sat down and I held Trudy’s hand and then she started to talk.

‘ “Es ist schön, was Sie mir sagen,”
she said, “and I believe you, but you must understand that it can’t go on like this.”

‘ “Why?” I said.

‘ “Because – well, for the reasons you mentioned yourself.”

‘ “But those aren’t really reasons.”

‘ “So you say,” she said mysteriously and fell silent.

‘ “Trudy,” I said, “do you really believe all that stuff?”

‘ “
Ja
,” she said.

‘ “But it’s all nonsense,” I said bravely. Only it wasn’t bravery so much as the fact that I felt I could really trust this girl, even though she was obviously one of those hundred-percent Nazis. Even if she actually did believe all that nonsense, I was sure she wouldn’t let it come between us. “It’s all crazy, can’t you see that?” I said.

‘ “So you say,” Trudy said. “And that’s what the Czechs think, and the Jews, too, because it’s not very pleasant for them.”

‘ “But we don’t even take it seriously!”

‘ “No,” she said, smiling slightly and shaking her head, “and I can understand why. It can’t be very nice to know you belong to an inferior race.”

‘I must be dreaming, I thought. I couldn’t believe my ears. And suddenly I had this weird feeling, she’s actually sitting next to me and then, even weirder, I could feel how she must
be feeling, sitting there next to somebody who belonged to an inferior race, and I thought, what does it feel like anyway – as if you’re sitting next to a chimpanzee? And I couldn’t believe it. And before I knew it, I asked her straight out.

‘ “
Sagen Sie mir
,” I said, “how do I … what do you see me as anyway?”

‘ “How do you mean?” she asked innocently, and again I simply couldn’t believe she’d been serious before. It seemed to me she must have been just pulling my leg.

‘ “Well, I mean from a racial point of view.”

‘ “
Ach so!
Well, you’re Czech, aren’t you?”

‘ “Yes.”

‘ “Well then, that’s how I see you – as a Czech.”

‘ “Fine, but then don’t you have … I mean, don’t I disgust you or something?”

‘ “You aren’t a Jew, are you?”

‘ “No.”

‘ “
Na also
. Then you’re an Aryan, and the only difference is that your racial mixture is an inferior kind.” She said this so innocently and in such a scholarly tone that it really floored me.

‘ “Racial mixture?” I asked, stunned, and she started unreeling a whole slew of lunatic theories – theories that really sounded crazy when you heard them the first time, about the German race being some kind of mixture of Nordic and I don’t know what all races and how everybody in Europe originally came from this race and how they all had blonde hair and blue eyes and she did too. Well, if that whole Nordic-German race looked as good as she did, it followed, I guess, that it really was a pretty noble race. The only trouble was that once she got started she couldn’t stop talking all the nonsense about first-class Ayrans and second-class Ayrans and mixed races and hopelessly mixed-up races like the Jews, for instance, and I listened and I was shocked and I still couldn’t believe she really meant it. Finally I stopped listening. I just couldn’t figure out how she could go on sitting there next to me explaining all these theories if I was as awful as she made out I must be, or how she could find me anything
but
awful if she knew I was,
racially, such an inferior blend. And then I figured this whole race theory must be something like that coffee they used to self at Meinl’s before the war, where the best and most expensive kind was blended out of about twenty different kinds of coffee and then there were cheaper blends made out of fewer kinds until you got all the way down to the ordinary Brazilian kind that didn’t even say what it was blended out of, so it probably wasn’t blended at all. But I didn’t tell her that and when she stopped talking for a minute, I asked her what she would do if I was a Jew?

‘ “I wouldn’t be sitting here.”

‘ “Why not?”

‘ “I couldn’t sit with a Jew.”

‘ “But why? You mean it would upset you physically or what?”

‘ “Yes. Of course it would.”

‘Then I thought I’d give her a hard time and make her ditch that racial junk once and for all.

‘ “Look,” I said in a fatherly tone. “You’re about eighteen, right?”

‘ “Going on eighteen.”

‘ “That means that ten years ago you weren’t even eight.”

‘ “That’s right.”

‘ “Then tell me – how many Jews have you seen anyway since you were eight years old?” I said as if that took care of that argument. She frowned again. I could tell I had her there.

‘ “That has nothing to do with it,” she said.

‘ “It certainly does. How can you judge about something you don’t know from your own experience?”

‘ “
Schauen Sie
,” she said again, using one of her favourite expressions, “you don’t know from your own experience that the earth rotates around the sun and yet you believe that, don’t you?”

‘That little Jesuit trick caught me off guard. All I could come up with right then was, “All right. But that has been scientifically proven.”

‘ “Well,” she said, “so has this.”

‘ “I beg your pardon?”

‘ “Have you read Rosenberg? Or Gobineau? Or Chamberlain? Or at least something by Streicher?”

‘ “Well, no, but …”

‘ “There, you see? And you talk about scientific proof. Well, these things have been proved just as scientifically as gravity and all those other things.”

‘This wasn’t the way I’d wanted things to go – getting all tangled up like this. But, believe me, arguing with her wasn’t easy. You couldn’t allow yourself to forget, even for a second, that you were arguing with a fanatical Nazi. And I still couldn’t quite believe she was. “You’re right,” I said.

‘ “
Na, sehen Sie!
”