The Cowards (24 page)

‘There,’ he said, ripped out the sheet of paper, and folded it.

‘Deliver this to headquarters as quickly as possible and wait there for an answer.’

‘Yes, sir,’ said the kid.

‘You may go.’

‘Yes, sir.’

The kid turned and disappeared into the park. I turned to watch him but all I could see were the long branches of a weeping willow waving in the dark. It was raining. Then another figure appeared by the fence. He stood there for a moment, still as a statue.

‘Careful now, boys!’ whispered Dr Bohadlo. ‘Follow me but keep quiet.’ Then with a tremendous crash, he pushed his way through the hedge. Our column moved after him. Dr Bohadlo broke into a trot. You could hear him splashing through the mud puddles in front of the park.

‘Quick!’ said the figure by the fence in a low voice. He’d mistaken us, I suddenly realized, for somebody else. We ran up to him, surrounded him, and Dr Bohadlo flashed the light on his face. The guy was wearing a cap, no overcoat, and a scarf around his neck. He squinted, blinded by the flashlight.

‘What are you doing here?’ said Dr Bohadlo sharply.

‘Turn that thing off!’ said the fellow.

‘What are you doing here?’

‘What’s it to you?’

‘I asked you what you’re doing here.’

‘And I say kiss my ass.’

‘It would be in your own interest if you’d show a little respect. Don’t you know there’s a curfew?’

‘Why don’t you just mind your own business. And turn that damn thing off.’

‘Tell me what you’re doing here!’

‘And like I told you – kiss my ass.’

‘You’re under arrest. Take him, boys,’ said Dr Bohadlo. The other two boys jumped him, but Benno and Haryk and I just stood there. He wasn’t about to give himself up. First he punched one of the kids in the nose, then he jumped sideways, out of the light. The kid landed hard in the mud. There’d been a soft cracking noise when the guy hit him, then a little sigh. Dr Bohadlo flashed the light around, trying to keep up with the guy now and the light slid sharply along the white fence, then picked him up slogging his way through the mud towards the station.

‘After him!’ yelled Dr Bohadlo and started running. We all
took off after him. Along the fence the mud was awful. The cone of light bounced around through the dark as Dr Bohadlo ran and our feet sank and stuck in the mud, and then suddenly we heard a big splat in front of us and I saw the guy fall. The other kid jumped him and came down on his back. We ran up. Dr Bohadlo trained his flashlight on him.

‘Get up!’ he said.

The guy lay there on his stomach, the boy straddling his back, and it didn’t look as if he was in any hurry to get up. He kept his face down and with his right hand started groping for something inside his jacket. Then all at once he stuck something in his mouth and before Dr Bohadlo could stop him a piercing whistle split the air. The kid on top of him grabbed his head and the whistling stopped but with a twist he threw the kid off and was up again. Dr Bohadlo grabbed him clumsily around the waist. Then I got into it, too, moving in and getting an armlock around his neck. He was struggling hard and he was very strong. Haryk had a hold on him now, too.

‘You bastards!’ the guy said savagely, breathing hard. ‘A great bunch of patriots you are – you sons of bitches.’

‘Quiet!’ said Dr Bohadlo.

‘Why don’t you go ask the Krauts for some help, huh?’

‘Hold him, boys. I’ll see if he’s armed,’ said Dr Bohadlo. I could feel the guy starting to squirm again, trying to break loose. Haryk let out a yell and sat down on the ground. Dr Bohadlo grabbed the guy around the waist again.

‘Jee-sus!’ moaned Haryk.

‘You hurt?’ said Benno.

‘He … he kicked me,’ said Haryk and moaned again. In the meantime the kid who’d landed in the mud before had taken over for Haryk and Benno was carefully holding on to one of his arms. The kid was clutching a bloody handkerchief.

‘Are you bleeding?’ said Dr Bohadlo.

‘Nothing serious,’ the boy said.

‘Now hold him tight, boys,’ said Dr Bohadlo. The guy tried to kick the first kid but he dodged to one side and then the kid told Haryk to help out so he could get the guy’s legs.

Haryk got up, clutching his stomach.

‘It hurts like hell,’ he said.

‘Come on, come on,’ said the kid.

Haryk went over to the guy and got a hold on him.

‘You sons of bitches! You’re going to pay for this!’ said the guy. The first boy knelt down and got a good grip on the guy’s feet. Now we were all holding on somewhere. Dr Bohadlo started searching his pockets.

‘Ah, there we are,’ he said and pulled something out. He held it in the palm of his hand, then turned the light on it. It was a heavy German pistol.

‘You sons of bitches! Traitors!’

Dr Bohadlo was just putting the pistol into his own pocket when two short whistles came from somewhere off in the dark and the guy jerked his head back and yelled, ‘Over here! Here! Help!’

The kid with the bleeding nose quickly rammed his bloody handkerchief into the guy’s mouth. The guy bit his hand. The kid howled. A light shone out of the darkness. It found us. I turned around. A couple of men were running towards us through the mud. I let go of the guy and got ready for a fight. I felt like pounding the hell out of somebody.

‘Watch it, boys!’ shouted Dr Bohadlo and flashed his light on the men running at us.

‘Son of a bitch!’ I heard behind me. I spun around and saw that the guy had wrenched himself free. Which was fine with me. I didn’t want to get into any fight with him. He jumped Dr Bohadlo and knocked the flashlight out of his hand. It fell to the ground, rolled, and then lay there lighting up a long patch of mud. I saw the guy ram his knee into Dr Bohadlo’s belly, then roll over on the ground with him, and Dr Bohadlo’s knickered little legs churning around in the air, but that was all I saw because the guy’s friends charged into us then. I went for one of them, but he got a leg behind me and over I went, but I didn’t let go of him so we both went down. I could feel the soft, wet mud under me as I lay there on my back. I poked my fingers into the guy’s eyes like we used to do when we were playing around with ju-jutsu. The guy let out a crazy howl and let go. I jumped up and kicked him in the belly. He doubled up
in the mud and moaned. I looked around. In the patch of light from Dr Bohadlo’s flashlight I saw two bodies wrestling in the mud. A clumsy figure, splattering mud all over the place, tore by. It was Benno. A flashlight went on and I saw Haryk lying there on the ground, his face all bloody. The kid sitting next to him in the mud was holding a hanky to his nose. Then they both disappeared in the dark again because the guy with the flashlight was hunting around for something. The light slid over puddles and mud until it picked me out. The next thing I knew two figures leaped into the light and started barrelling towards me. I didn’t wait for them but turned and lit out after Benno. I heard them sloshing along noisily behind me. Then somebody yelled, ‘Let him go!’ Though the footsteps stopped I kept right on going. I made a flying leap towards the hedge and burrowed through. The twigs slashed my face and I could hear my coat ripping. I went right on through.

‘Danny?’ said a voice out of the dark.

‘Benno?’ I said.

‘Yeah. Where are you?’

‘Here.’

I groped my way over towards Benno’s voice. Then I felt him next to me.

‘Anybody else here?’ I said.

‘I don’t know. I guess not.’

‘They still fighting?’

‘Not any more. Look.’

I looked over towards the battlefield. By now, Dr Bohadlo’s flashlight, half buried in mud, was only dimly shining on the back of the kid with the smashed-in nose. On the other hand, over by the wall, you could see a bunch of men helping each other over the fence one after the other.

‘Well, that’s that,’ said Benno.

‘You said it!’

The last guy swung himself up, dropped, and vanished on the other side of the fence.

‘Shall we go back?’ said Benno.

‘Sure,’ I said. We shoved our way back through the hedge. Somebody was picking the flashlight out of the mud and you
could see a red hand cleaning it off. Then the cone of light circled. It picked up Haryk holding his hanky up to his cheek. A relief to see nothing worse had happened to him. We hurried over to the light. Dr Bohadlo was standing there with his flashlight, staring off into the night. The two kids came up – one still clutching his nose, the other limping. We all crowded around Dr Bohadlo.

‘Are you all here?’ he asked.

‘Yeah,’ I said.

‘I’ll need one of you to run a report over to the brewery.’

Nobody volunteered.

‘Hold my flashlight,’ said Dr Bohadlo. One of the kids held the flashlight and Dr Bohadlo pulled out his notebook and I noticed that his sleeve was ripped all the way up to the elbow.

‘What happened to you?’ Benno asked Haryk.

‘I got one right in the teeth.’

‘Let’s see.’

‘Skip it. I checked. They’re all still there.’

‘And all that blood?’

‘I guess I got that when he knocked me down. How about yourself?’

‘Me? I’m okay,’ said Benno.

‘Were you in on the fight?’

‘Are you kidding? I sure wasn’t.’

‘How about you?’ Haryk asked me.

‘Yeah.’

‘You get hurt?’

‘I won.’

‘Oh, come on!’

‘Really. I did.’

‘You cleared out just like Benno.’

‘Honest to God, I was fighting like crazy.’

‘But you didn’t win.’

‘I did, too.’

‘There,’ said Dr Bohadlo and tore a page out of his notebook. ‘Now, who’s going to …’

Just then a submachine gun started chattering in short bursts from the station. We stiffened. The machine-gun fire died
down, then a few more shots cracked. Revolver shots this time.

‘My God, that gang is going to get the whole city in trouble,’ said Dr Bohadlo in a shocked tone of voice.

Behind the fence something flashed. Smoke rolled up. Somebody had thrown a hand grenade.

‘Let’s clear out of here,’ Benno muttered.

‘Wait,’ stammered Dr Bohadlo.

‘Why? What’s the point in waiting around here anyway?’ Benno persisted. The submachine gun on the other side of the fence chattered again. Suddenly a floodlight blazed on over to the left. I turned. Germans armed with submachine guns and rifles came racing out around the corner of the warehouse. I heard a plop behind me. I turned and saw Benno stretched out flat in the mud. Dr Bohadlo didn’t budge. The Germans rushed up to us and halted. An officer trained a flashlight on us.

‘What are you doing here?’ he demanded.

‘We belong to the Czech Army,’ said Dr Bohadlo quickly.

‘Aha! Herr Doktor Sabata, was?’

‘Exactly!’

‘What’s going on here?’

‘We were attacked,’ said Dr Bohadlo. ‘A group of men … armed men …’

‘Where are they now?’ the officer asked impatiently.

‘There. At the station,’ said Dr Bohadlo.

‘Gut,’
said the officer and turned to the soldiers. ‘
Los! Gehn wir!
’ he barked and they all started running towards the station.

‘Come on, let’s get out of here!’ said Benno.

‘What the hell are we waiting for? Let’s go, you guys,’ said Haryk. Behind the fence there was another explosion, then three more, one right after the other. In the light of one blast I saw three figures scrambling down over the fence and taking off in the direction of the workers’ district up on the hill. The submachine gun started chattering again.

‘Let’s go, boys. There’s nothing we can do here anyway,’ said Dr Bohadlo.

‘Exactly,’ said Benno.

We trotted past the park, heading for town. It was raining hard. Another explosion went off and the flash lit up one whole side of the buildings on Jirasek Boulevard.

‘We’ll go through the underpass,’ panted Dr Bohadlo. We ran across the bridge, our footsteps booming, and switched left towards the underpass. Another long spatter of shots rang out from the station. We tramped through the underpass and came out on to a muddy path and then we all slowed down and I looked around and the railroad station was dark and silent again. Only the rain kept coming down.

‘Boy, does that ever hurt!’ said Haryk.

‘What’s wrong?’ I asked.

‘That guy really kicked me in the gut all right.’

‘Is anybody injured?’ asked Dr Bohadlo.

‘Me,’ said Haryk.

‘Where?’

‘In the stomach. It really hurts.’

‘Can you walk?’

‘Yes.’

‘As soon as we get back to the brewery, report to the first-aid station.’

‘I will.’

‘Anyone else have any injuries?’

Nobody spoke up. We cut through the park in front of the County Office Building.

‘Know what I’d like to do?’ Benno whispered to me.

‘Take off. Beat it.’

‘Don’t. Don’t do it, Benno.’

‘Do what?’ said Haryk and slowed down for us. We let the others walk on ahead a little.

‘I just said I’d like to take off,’ said Benno.

‘Me, too,’ said Haryk.

‘Don’t. Stick around,’ I said, ‘for a while anyway.’

‘Stick around? Hell, once we’re back inside we’ll never get out again,’ Benno said.

‘Sure we will.’

‘Well, how?’

‘Don’t worry. We’ll manage.’

‘Yeah, but why crawl back in when we’ve got a perfect chance to take off now?’

I couldn’t tell them that I wanted to be in on whatever was going on back at the brewery. That I wanted to see the army finally getting ready for action. And to see what Colonel Cemelik was up to. So all I said was, ‘Look, you know how dumb they are. They’re just dumb enough to lock us all up.’

‘Shit,’ said Benno. ‘Anyway, we’re already mixed up in this stupid business. And things can’t get much worse for us than they are already.’

‘How do you mean?’ I asked.

‘Well, I mean what’s already happened.’

‘What?’

‘Jesus Christ! What happened with those communists.’

‘Yeah, so what?’

‘Oh, come on, stop playing so dumb.’

‘I still don’t get it.’

‘I mean that when the Russians come, they’ll wipe us out because of that – that’s what I mean.’