The Cowards (40 page)

‘What’s that?’ said Benno.

‘Machine guns,’ said Haryk.

‘Jesus, maybe … maybe they made a mistake …’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, what if it’s not the Russians after all?’

‘That’s crazy,’ I said. ‘That’s … well, who knows …’

‘The Russians wouldn’t be machine-gunning anybody,’ said Benno.

‘But, look … well, but everybody went out to welcome them, didn’t they?’

‘Sure. But who told them to?’ Benno turned to Dr Bohadlo. ‘Who told everybody the Russians were coming? Do you know, Doctor?’

‘Well, I don’t know,’ said Dr Bohadlo. He’d suddenly turned pale and his usually optimistic face looked worried. ‘I have no idea, boys. Nobody told us at the brewery, that’s all I can say.’

‘See?’ said Benno, and turned to us. ‘Somebody got this crazy idea and the whole town fell for it.’

‘Oh, sure, sure,’ I said sarcastically.

‘Well, what do
you
think it is then?’

‘How should I know?’

Just then the machine gun started chattering again, louder and quite clear now. You could hear each shot, sharp, dry, and hard. It sounded as if they were getting pretty close now.

‘There, you see?’ said Benno. ‘That’s not the Russians, that’s the SS.’ He got up off the grass. So did the rest of us. The machine gun let go another burst.

‘Let’s take cover,’ said Benno.

‘Wait a minute,’ I said.

‘You wait if you want to, I’m going,’ said Benno, and started running towards the factory.

‘Benno, don’t be an idiot! Come back,’ said Haryk.

‘Wait, Mr Manes!’ called Dr Bohadlo.

Benno stopped and turned.

‘Wait a minute. We’ve got to go back to the brewery.’

‘Not me. You’re all crazy,’ said Benno.

I watched him and was surprised to find I wasn’t scared at all. Benno stood there and I heard Dr Bohadlo yelling, ‘Mr Manes, you come right back! Leaving now would be desertion,’ and I watched Benno standing there getting all red in the face and confused and suddenly all I wanted was to be in the middle of the actual fighting, to take up my gun or my pistol and fight for Irena, to win her. The machine gun hammered
away again and I longed to be out there firing back at it so I yelled, ‘Come on, Benno. Don’t be silly. Let’s go back to the brewery. Come on!’

‘Sure, hurry up!’ said one of the other boys and I knew that when he said that he wasn’t just talking to hear himself talk like me but because he was really brave, but it didn’t make much difference, the effect was all the same. Benno still just stood there. So I yelled again, ‘We’re going, Benno! Don’t be so stupid. Come on,’ and I started off and the other guys and Haryk followed and Dr Bohadlo said, ‘Mr Manes, I am ordering you to come!’

I was dragging my feet, looking at Benno.

‘For Chrissake,’ I said, ‘come on.’ I said it as if I was trying to lure him off to go swimming with me and Benno shuffled up all red and sweating like a pig and then Dr Bohadlo hurried up ahead to lead us back. ‘All right, boys,’ he said, ‘let’s take it back at a good trot now,’ and off we went, with Benno jogging along behind us.

‘Idiots,’ he said. ‘You’re running straight into hell like a pack of fools. This isn’t going to be any picnic.’ That was all he had breath for though. We had to catch up with Dr Bohadlo and he was way out in front by now with his fat rump bouncing around in his knickers. When we got to the main street, Dr Bohadlo suddenly slowed to a walk. The people who’d stayed home were all out on the sidewalks nervously looking off to the east. Dr Bohadlo started trotting again. A good Scoutmaster’s trot. We jogged down the middle of the street, our shoes clattering on the cobblestones. People turned to stare. The sound of gunfire rolled in from the east and here were people who would be hiding in their basements soon and there we were jogging along, in step, straight into the whole big mess. Calm and unmoved, the sun shone on as we clattered down the street. The street pointed straight as an arrow to the underpass and all along the sides I could see people standing on the sidewalk, looking smaller and smaller down the length of the street, and they were all waiting. A deep rumble came from the town. It grew louder. It was a familiar sound but I couldn’t quite place it as we trotted towards it. I stared ahead and the
noise grew louder and then suddenly the people down by the underpass started to scatter and then to run. The sound was practically a roar now, yet through it our footsteps kept on clattering as we ran straight for it. There was a scream and a woman picked up a little boy and ran into a house with him. Then those two long rows of people lining the street from the underpass to where we were started to break up. They started to push, they crowded into doorways, they ran for the side-streets. The roar changed into an awful racket and was already coming from just on the other side of the underpass. We kept on trotting, then stopped as though someone had ordered us to. We huddled together and stared at the underpass. And there inside, under the iron girders and between the two stone pillars, a tank suddenly appeared, clattered up into full view and, making a terrific racket, made right for us going fast. I felt as if I was standing in a desert face to face with a rhinoceros. The tank’s armoured plates glittered in the sunshine and it was swarming with soldiers in camouflaged parachute-troop uniforms. That was all I stayed to see before taking off like a shot around the corner and into a side street. Benno was ahead of me and Dr Bohadlo ahead of him. Haryk was running along beside me. The street led up a steep hill with a factory wall on one side and a warehouse fence on the other. We were trapped. It gave me a weird feeling as the roar of the tank grew louder and both that fence and that wall looked awfully long and the hill steep. I saw that Benno and Dr Bohadlo had already made it up to where the fence stopped and I was absolutely certain the tank was right at my heels. The roar sounded so close I couldn’t believe it could get any louder. Dr Bohadlo and Benno disappeared around the corner. We weren’t far from the end of the wall now. Haryk and I were both panting and the roar and clatter were unbelievably loud. There was only a little way to go. Suddenly I realized I was scared stiff. Then I made it around the corner, and Haryk tore in behind me, and we stopped because there were people behind the fence and others running along beside it out of town, away from that tank. We stood at the edge of the crowd and now all at once I wasn’t scared any more. The tank rumbled along the street below us. I lay down
on the ground and cautiously stuck my head out for a look. The side street we’d raced up dropped steeply and was empty and so was the patch I could see of the main street below. The sun shone on it and that was all. I lay there for a couple of seconds and could feel the people behind me watching, too, and then I flattened out against the ground because just then the muzzle of a cannon appeared at the corner of the factory wall below. The cannon kept on coming for what seemed like an awfully long time, and then the front of the tank painted in big irregular splotches of colour, and then the squat turret, and then the whole tank hove into view with those soldiers all over it in those camouflaged uniforms with branches stuck into their netted helmets. Some were perched on ledges of armour above the clattering tank track, their legs dangling down in their heavy boots. They’d rolled up their sleeves, I noticed, and I could see the oily gleam of their long Lugers. A guy in black overalls and wearing earphones looked out over the open turret. Next to him, leaning against the side of the turret, stood a soldier holding on with his left hand with a submachine gun in his right, his uniform draped with grenades. For a moment everything was drowned out in the frantic roar of the machine and then the tank clanked out of sight – and the noise faded, grew fainter, and soon you could hardly hear it. All that was left were the bare cobblestones sparkling in the sun. I got up. Haryk came over and, in a hoarse voice, said, ‘Is it gone?’

‘Yes,’ I said.

Then that whole crowd of people who’d been standing back of the wall came over and started asking me questions.

‘Did you see it?’

‘Yes.’

‘Were they SS men?’

‘I guess so. I don’t know.’

‘I thought you said you saw ’em,’ one huge guy said in a hoarse voice. He sounded drunk.

‘Well, you tell me how I’m supposed to recognize them and I’ll tell you who they were,’ I said irritably. ‘Why didn’t you look for yourself?’

Then I turned to Haryk. ‘Let’s clear out of here,’ I said.

‘Hold on,’ he said. ‘There’s Benno. Hey, Benno!’ he yelled.

Benno waddled over, his eyes still popping half-way out of his head.

‘Still think it’s fun?’ he said.

‘Who said anything about fun?’ I said.

‘You know what I mean. You’re both nuts and you know that, too.’

‘What are you complaining about? Nothing happened to you, did it?’

‘Not, but it could have.’

Dr Bohadlo came plodding towards us.

‘I don’t know about the rest of you,’ Benno said, ‘but I’m going to take off for the woods.’

‘On a mushroom hunt?’ Haryk asked.

‘I’m just going to wait up there till the Russians get here.’

‘You’ll starve,’ I said.

‘I’d rather starve than have some crazy SS man put a hole in my head,’ said Benno.

I laughed like a movie hero. It was fun acting tough, now that the tank was gone. ‘It’s all a question of taste,’ I said.

Benno blew up. ‘Listen, Smiricky,’ he said, ‘if you think you’re some kind of a hero …’

‘It starts to look that way, doesn’t it?’ I said. ‘Compared to you, anyway.’

‘You’re not, though.’

‘And you are?’

‘No. But neither are you.’

‘So what am I, then?’

‘Stupid. That’s all.’

I looked at Benno as if that had really hurt. I hoped my eyes looked sad and, just to make sure they did, I lowered my lids and looked down for a minute.

‘Maybe,’ I said. ‘Maybe I am.’

‘You are sure,’ said Benno. ‘As stupid as they come.’

‘Maybe I am,’ I repeated, with my eyes, still trained on the ground. Then I raised them abruptly, looked Benno right in the
eye and said, ‘Things are different with me than they are with you.’

I wondered how he would react to that. It would have worked on Irena. But this was Benno. I hadn’t really stopped to think how he’d take it. I’d said it more to satisfy myself than anything else.

‘Bullshit. Just what in the hell is so different, if I may be forgiven for asking?’ said Benno sarcastically.

‘Well, oh, let’s not argue about it,’ I said. ‘I’m going back to town no matter how stupid you think that makes me. You coming?’

Benno wasn’t the type to fall for my kind of act. He did, though, look a bit more thoughtful suddenly.

‘Smiricky, don’t be a fool,’ he said. ‘Don’t tell me you want to get yourself killed just to impress …’

‘Don’t worry,’ I broke in. ‘I don’t want to get killed.’

‘No? Then why are you knocking yourself out so hard to get into this?’

‘I want to, that’s all.’

‘You just want to show off for Irena, that’s all,’ said Benno.

‘Whatever you say, Benno.’

‘Don’t be dumb, Danny.’

‘I can’t help it. Maybe I just am.’

‘Maybe you are.’

I smiled my pained little smile. ‘Well, Benno,’ I said, ‘you coming with us?’

Benno looked at me, his face very serious now, as if this was nothing to joke about, and said, ‘Boy, you’ve really lost your head on that girl, haven’t you?’

‘So you’re coming?’ I said with a smile.

‘Don’t say I didn’t warn you. And I’ll tell you one thing – I’d be sorry if you got knocked off.’

‘Well, so long then, Benno,’ I said and put out my hand. ‘Don’t be mad at me.’

‘So long, Danny,’ said Benno. ‘Too bad about you. We’ll miss you in the band and … well, just in general.’

‘Christ! All these good-byes. You make it sound like a funeral,’ said Haryk.

‘Coming with me, Haryk?’ said Benno.

‘Hell, no. I’m going back to the brewery.’

‘Well, so long then,’ said Benno, and put out his hand.

‘Oh, cut it out,’ said Haryk. ‘The look on your face is enough to make a guy vomit.’

Suddenly there was a roar of a motor again. We froze. The next thing we knew a plane was swooping over us, flying low. All over, people were dropping to the ground as the plane’s shadow flickered across the field and disappeared against the sun, but you could still hear the roar of its motor.

‘Run for the woods!’ shouted Benno, as he scrambled up and started running off towards the first big trees. The roar of the motor, faint a minute before, was growing louder again. The plane was coming back. You couldn’t see it, though, because of the sun.

‘Get down, Benno!’ I yelled. But the motor made too much noise and he was already too far away. He was scrambling up the slope towards the woods. Lots of people were scrambling up all around him. The motor was roaring full blast and the noise was growing louder. I flopped to the ground next to Haryk and Dr Bohadlo who were already flat out. The din reached a climax and through it came the long chattering bursts of a machine gun. I could hear the short dry strike of the bullets close by as they buried themselves in the earth. Then the sound of the motor faded again and the plane disappeared over the other side of the wall. I jumped up and looked over. I caught only a glimpse of a German fighter plane flying fast and low over the town. It turned east and vanished among the hills along the border.

‘I’ll bet that’s the last we’ll see of him,’ Haryk said.

‘Let’s hope so.’

‘We were lucky.’

‘We sure as hell were,’ I said, and all at once I felt how afraid I’d been. Christ, I might have been hit! I looked around. A few people were running across the field for the woods. Higher up, close to the rim of the woods, I made out Benno’s well-rounded body swaying as he ran.

‘Look,’ I said to Haryk.

‘What?’

‘Over there. See Benno?’

‘Good Lord. It doesn’t look like he’s planning to stop till he gets to Ratejna.’

‘We can just let him go, can’t we, Doctor?’ I asked Dr Bohadlo who was standing next to us. He looked completely washed out.