The Cowards (43 page)

‘Any more Germans coming?’ someone called out.

‘It doesn’t look like it.’

‘We ought to get the wounded out of here.’

The guy with the red armband waved his hand. ‘You all ought to get back and take cover. There may be more Germans coming through.’

‘And the wounded?’

‘Take them over to the old customs house.’

‘You mean you think there’re more Germans coming along behind that Russian tank?’

‘Yes,’ said the guy with the red armband.

‘How could
that
happen?’

‘Well, that’s what comrade captain here says anyway.’

It was the first time I’d ever heard the word ‘comrade’ used seriously.

‘The Russians must have got ahead of them somewhere along the line.’

‘Looks that way.’

‘All right, come on, let’s look after the wounded.’

‘Come on, Lexa,’ I said.

‘Aren’t we going to look for Haryk?’

‘Oh, he’s probably just lying low someplace. Let’s go down to the customs house. If he’s been hurt, they’ll bring him there.’

We went to the old customs house. The men had spread out in groups across the fields and some were already carrying back the wounded. A truck pulled up in front of the customs house. We stood there, watching them bring in the wounded and lift them up into the truck. The guy with the red armband was supervising the loading.

‘Leave the dead here. We’re just taking the wounded this time,’ he told the men who’d brought Hrob down. Soldiers
carried in two Russians from the tank. I looked at my watch. It was five.

Somebody yelled, ‘Here’s an Englishman or something.’

‘Where?’ I said right away.

‘You know English?’ the guy with the red armband asked.

‘Yes.’

‘Go over and talk to him.’

A man in an English uniform was lying on the ground groaning softly. I bent over him.

‘Are you hurt?’ I asked. He opened his eyes and nodded.

‘Where?’

‘Don’t know,’ he said between his teeth.

‘He doesn’t know where he’s hurt.’ I told the guy with the red armband. There were no obvious wounds that I could see.

‘You better go along to the hospital with him,’ said the guy. ‘You may have to translate.’

‘All right,’ I said. They loaded the Englishman into the truck.

‘We get everybody?’ the guy asked.

‘I guess so,’ somebody said.

‘Then get going.’

‘So long, Lexa,’ I said and got in next to the driver.

‘So long,’ said Lexa. I slammed the door shut and looked out. Some guys with rifles were standing with a bunch of Russians on the wet highway. A clouded sun shone on them and there was a singed smell in the fresh air. The truck started off. I leaned out of the window for a look at the two still-smoking tanks facing each other on the road. A light breeze blew the smoke low along the ground and across the meadows to the river. Above the hills of the frontier, big clouds were stacking up in tremendous mountains of their own. The figures on the field receded. I looked around at the driver. Gripping the steering wheel, he stared ahead nervously. The wet pavement shone and, in front of the houses, men and kids stood, rifles in hand. Lots of them, I noticed, were wearing red armbands now. As we turned off the highway towards the bunker and the spa, I saw a gang of German soldiers. Wearing camouflaged ponchos and walking along with their hands up, they were being herded along by a few raincoated men with their rifles at the ready.
We’d passed the bunker by then and were driving through the outskirts of town. I leaned back and lay my submachine gun across my knees. For the first time my muscles and brain relaxed. I felt a tremendous calm relief. This was a real uprising! With a feeling of deep satisfaction, I closed my eyes. Again I could see the wet asphalt road, the rainbow, the German tank glistening from the rain, the steam rising above its hot motor, and then that frantic moment when I was so close to it I could smell its mammoth steel body and the whole world started to spin and then falling into the cold water in the ditch and the treads of the tank clanking above me over the asphalt and the bullets whistling through the air into the field, and everywhere and always that terrifying deafening din.

The truck drove through the outskirts of town and the little red-roofed houses flashed past and, thinking back on all that had happened, I was glad. I could still see Hrob throwing out his arms before pitching over on to the grass and the turret of the tank rotating with deadly calm and the speckled figures of the SS men leaping down on to the asphalt and into the ditch. I felt the submachine gun lying across my knees and realized I hadn’t even fired a shot. I was overcome with regret; I’d missed my big chance. And I could just see me lying there in the ditch, the muzzle sticking up over the side of the road and that grey iron German giant coming towards me. My God, why hadn’t I fired? My fingers longed to pull the trigger now but now it wouldn’t do much good. The gun lay in my lap, silent and cold, and it was too late now to feel sorry. My God, up there in the deep shade of the woods with the whole landscape in front of me like in the palm of my hand and that bunch of SS men clinging on to the tank – I could have fired then. But I hadn’t. I hadn’t fired a single shot. All I did was gawk at the tank and then run away. It made me furious. We drove past the station and across the bridge and up towards the hospital. I was furious. The wet branches of a weeping willow swished against the window. The hospital gates were wide open and a man in a white coat stood off to one side waving us in and, as we got up to him, he jumped on the running board, leaned in through the open window and hung on to the handle of my door.

‘You got casualties?’ he shouted.

‘Yeah,’ I said. There was an odd look of respect in his eyes as he looked me over. Then I realized I must look pretty impressive with my mud-spattered submachine gun lying in my lap and my clothes caked with mud and dirt. I must look pretty terrific, in fact. I just wished Irena could see me like that, and the thought made me feel pretty satisfied with myself again.

‘Many?’ the man asked.

‘Enough,’ I said.

‘It must have been pretty bad up there.’

‘It was.’

As we came up to the entrance of the surgery pavilion, a hospital attendant ran out. The white robes of the Franciscan nuns glimmered in the doorway. I got out and jumped heavily to the ground. I could practically feel everybody watching me. The tall figure of Dr Preisner, his glasses shining, loomed up over the nuns. He came over.

‘How many do you have?’ he asked.

‘I don’t know, Doctor, but we have quite a few,’ I said. Stretcher-bearers hurried out to the truck. Some of them were still wearing street clothes.

‘Careful,’ shouted Dr Preisner. ‘Take them to the hall in front of the operating room.’ Then he went back into the hospital and the men set down their stretchers and I stood in the doorway next to the nurses watching them unload the wounded. The nurses eyed me and my weapon with awe. The first two stretcher-bearers trotted into the hospital. One of them was Mr Starec who taught at the high school and whose son was a doctor at the hospital. Then the second stretcher went by. I noticed they were just unloading my Englishman.

‘I’ll go in with this one,’ I said. ‘He’s English – doesn’t speak any Czech.’

The bearers glanced up at me, then carried the Englishman in on their stretcher and I followed them down a dim, rubber-carpeted corridor. It was quiet in there. People in pyjamas and hospital bathrobes stood at all the doors, looking out. As I walked along, I realized everybody was looking at me and that
I was tracking mud all over the clean floor. Nuns hurried on ahead of us. We turned a corner and stopped. Three stretchers had been set down on the floor next to the wall and through an open door at the end of the hall came a wedge of light. The stretcher-bearers set the Englishman down. Dr Capek appeared in the doorway, his rubber-gloved hands held out in front of him, his surgeon’s gown spattered with blood.

‘All right, next,’ he said, and Mr Starec and another guy lifted their patient and carried him inside. The other guy was Jirka Hubalek whose father was chief of the internal medicine department. We shoved our stretcher up closer to the door. Jirka came out of the operating room, picked up the empty stretcher and some rags that had been left lying on it, and came towards me.

‘Hi,’ I said to him in a low voice. He didn’t seem to recognize me. He was just walking along staring ahead of him, as blank as a sleepwalker, but looking worried. Then he recognized me.

‘Hello,’ he said.

‘You helping out?’ I said.

Jirka nodded. Then he suddenly just took hold of my arm and led me aside and said, ‘I’ve got something I want to show you.’

‘What?’

Jirka leaned the stretcher up against the wall and hunted through the rags he’d picked up. They were all that were left of a pair of Russian army pants. There were splotches of blood on the pants.

‘Look,’ he said. ‘Look at what that Russian was carrying around in his pockets.’ He held out his hand, then opened it in mournful silence. There lay two wrist watches and a silver pencil.

‘Hmm,’ I said. ‘Well, so what?’

‘Well, so it’s true,’ said Jirka sombrely.

‘So what’s true?’

‘Just that.’

‘Well, what?’

‘About the watches.’

‘Well, sure. I can see they’re watches, but what of it?’

‘Well, so that proves that what they said in the newspapers is true after all, that’s what.’

‘You mean about the Russians stealing?’

‘Stealing – and for instance in Moravia they’re already confiscating private property.’

‘Crap,’ I said.

‘And this? These things?’

‘Nothing to get all steamed up about, that’s for sure.’

‘Well, and just think what’s going to happen when they’re here. You thought about that?’

‘Oh, Jirka, don’t be crazy.’

‘Crazy? I’m not crazy. I’d rather be out of here when they all march in, that’s all.’

‘Well, but what’d you expect? They’re soldiers, aren’t they? After what they have to go through day after day, you think they’re going to worry about some dumb bug-eyed civilian losing a wrist watch? That’s the spoils of war, right? You think English soldiers don’t steal? Or the Americans maybe?’

‘But …’

‘Anyway, he probably took it from an SS man in the first place. They’re coming straight in from Germany now. And who the hell knows? Maybe that SS man killed the Russian’s wife somewhere in Russia a year or two ago.’

‘Not very likely. The Russian I found these things on can’t be more than eighteen.’

‘Well, some other Russian’s wife, then. It’s all the same thing.’

Jirka shook his head. ‘I still don’t like it,’ he said.

‘Oh, for Chrissake, don’t make such a big tragedy out of a couple of stupid little watches!’ I said. What made me even madder was that I realized I didn’t know what was going to happen either. Still, this whole thing was ridiculous. Idiotic. Wrist watches! As though everything that had already happened and was still going to happen had anything to do with a stinking little wrist watch.

‘So some Kraut’s going to have to look up at a church clock instead of at his wrist, for Chrissake, so what?’ I said. ‘Worse things can happen to a person.’

Jirka stuck the watches back into the Russian’s pants pocket. ‘I’m still not so sure. So long.’

‘So long,’ I said, and without another word Jirka started off down the dimly-lit corridor. They were carrying somebody out through the door on a stretcher and you could see Dr Preisner in a white cap, the front of his gown dotted with bloodstains. Two more casualties were taken into the operating room. The Englishman was shoved right up next to the door. A nurse hurried out and knelt beside the stretcher.

‘Now, where does it hurt you?’ she asked him.

The Englishman shook his head.

‘He’s English,’ I said. The nurse glanced up at me; she looked scared. I shifted my machine gun around to my back.

‘I’ll translate for you,’ I said. She nodded with a little smile and I asked him in English where it hurt.

‘I don’t know. I can’t move my arms,’ he said hoarsely.

‘He can’t move his arms,’ I said.

‘I see,’ said the nurse. ‘Can you help me undress him?’

‘Certainly,’ I said. The nurse lifted the Englishman and, while I held him up, deftly stripped off his jacket, then unbuttoned and took off his shirt revealing his broad chest. A tin tag dangling from a chain around his neck lay half hidden in the hair on his chest. Under each shoulder was a small bloody hole.

‘There. You see?’ said the nurse.

‘Yes,’ I said, and bent over the Englishman. ‘Probably from a submachine gun. One right after the other.’

‘Next,’ called Dr Capek. The two bearers lifted the Englishman’s stretcher and carried him into the operating room. I went in after them. Dr Capek looked me up and down – an unfriendly look.

‘You can’t …’ he said.

‘I’m an interpreter,’ I broke in, ‘in case you need to ask him anything.’

‘I speak Russian,’ said Dr Capek.

‘He’s English.’

‘English?’ Dr Capek raised his eyebrows. ‘All right, come on,’ he said, and turned, and when he turned I noticed that the
buttons on the back of his operating gown were buttoned up wrong. There were two operating tables with bright lamps hanging down over them. Dr Preisner was working at one; a nurse stood over at the patient’s head, letting something drip on to the mask tied over the man’s face. Dr Preisner was amputating the man’s hand at the wrist. The instrument nurse stood on the other side of the operating table silently handing him the instruments. I looked back at the empty table. The bearers set the stretcher down and two nuns lifted the Englishman up on the operating table. Dr Capek leaned over him.

‘Hmm,’ he said. ‘Just under the shoulder bone. Both shots. Sit him up.’

The nurses propped him up. There were two identical holes in the Englishman’s back, one on each side.

‘Let’s take a look at this,’ said Dr Capek, and held out his hand. The nurse gave him some sort of instrument through which the doctor closely scanned the Englishman’s chest. It must have been some sort of manual X-ray or something. First he looked at one side, then the other. Then he set the X-ray down and said, ‘He’s lucky. They’re both clean wounds.’