The Cowards (44 page)

‘I’m glad,’ I said. Dr Capek looked at me and waited. ‘Is there anything else I can do, Doctor?’

‘I don’t think so. Thank you,’ he said.

‘Well, good-bye,’ I said, and left the operating room and plodded down the hall where the patients, silent and stunned, stared at me from the doors of their rooms. I walked out onto the damp pavement of the driveway in front of the hospital and there the western horizon spread out before me its brilliant colours and small puffball clouds. The sun was already setting; the air was cool and fresh after the rain. I took a deep breath. From far off came the tough stutter of a machine gun. I pricked up my ears. From somewhere beyond town came the faint rumble of a tank. Then there was the clear blast of a cannon. Then another. A pair of machine guns started chattering simultaneously. Quite a racket for a spring evening like this, even though it came from pretty far off. Guns boomed again.

I looked out across the town, then turned into the street the
Port Arthur’s on. It was quiet and the street was dim and unlit, but the sound of gunfire around the frontier went on. Another machine gun started hammering away. There were pauses and then it would start up again and each time it sounded louder. I started to run. The wind felt cool against my face and I felt strong and dangerous. I sprinted past the Port Arthur and down towards the brewery with only the noise of gunfire and my own footsteps to keep me company. Above the woods, off to the east, the sky had already darkened; the tops of the tall oaks and lindens swayed in the glow of the setting sun. A couple of people were running down the path to the brewery. I looked across the bridge towards the station and could see dark figures running in opposite directions. Shots flashed and cracked around the station. I turned and set off again for the brewery. I held my submachine gun in both hands and, jogging along, heard the whiz of more bullets. When I got to the gate I slowed down. Inside, in the yard, it was a sea of confusion. Crowds of men and guys my age, some with guns, some without, were milling around and I saw a couple of guys making their way up and over the fence out back by the woods. On the driveway, a little man in uniform was trying to line up a bewildered corps of young riflemen. The chestnut trees blocked the sun; the brewery yard lay in shadow. Major Weiss, capless and wearing a civilian topcoat, raced by. Suddenly somebody shouted from the gate, ‘The SS! They’re heading for the brewery!’ Confusion turned to chaos. Rifles and grenades, tossed aside, lay all over the place. I went over to the main building without really knowing what to do next. Men burst out of the door and started piling into a car parked by the steps. I recognized Mr Kaldoun, Mr Krocan, and Mr Jungwirth. The car started off with a jerk and honked its way through the milling crowd. I figured I’d go through the warehouse, hide in the bushes along the river bank, and wait until it all blew over. Tanks couldn’t cross the bridge anyway. It wouldn’t hold them. I hurried along, keeping close to the wall. The savage bursts of gunfire from town were getting closer and closer. I jumped and dodged between little piles of abandoned weapons. Amazing how many guns we’d already captured from the Germans. Then all
of a sudden I saw somebody inching out through a small low window next to the sidewalk just ahead of me. Already more than half-way out, supporting the front of his body on the flat of his hands, he was handwalking forward trying to get his legs and feet out. I stopped. A smudged figure sprawled on the sidewalk, picked itself up, and turned to face me. It had on one of those little caps like Masaryk used to wear. It was Prema. Prema! His cap was cocked over a coal-dusted face and his white eyeballs shone through the black. Prema! I felt a wild rush of joy. Just the guy I’d been looking for. Things would really start happening now.

‘Prema!’ I shouted.

‘Danny! What’s going on? Where’re the Germans?’

‘They’re supposed to be coming this way.’ I still couldn’t get over how glad I was to see him again. ‘How’d you get out of there anyway?’

‘I’ve been filing away like mad for three days. Come on, let’s get moving.’

‘Wait! Where are we going?’

‘My place. Let’s move!’

‘What’re we gonna do there?’

‘I’ve got a machine gun all ready to go.’

‘A machine gun?’

‘Yeah. Come on, let’s move!’ Prema pulled my arm. Machine guns rattled from the bridge.

‘Wait! The Germans are out on the streets!’

Prema stopped. ‘Christ! That submachine gun’s the only thing you got?’

I looked around. ‘There’re guns lying all over the place,’ I said. Prema ran out onto the driveway, grabbed a rifle, hunted around for something else like his life depended on it, stooped, and stuck whatever it was in his pocket.

‘Come on!’ I yelled. ‘Let’s go round the back way.’

‘And then?’

‘Under the bridge.’

We ran over to the warehouse. You could still hear shots coming from over in front of the brewery. The warehouse was dark; we ran straight through and out the back door to the
slope down to the river bank. We forced our way through the wet shrubbery at the top of the slope. Shots rang out to our left. Prema ran ahead, plunged down the slope with big long strides and I slid down after him. By the river bank, we looked up from its reflection in the water to the bridge itself, arching against the pale sky. Along the railing you could see the running silhouettes of people wearing hats and caps. Only a few carried rifles. A tank roared along a street on the other side of the bridge. We crouched there under the bushes, water dripping on us from the branches, the dark river murmuring along a few feet below. A machine gun chattered in a series of short bursts above the roar of the tank. The figures on the bridge dropped out of sight. On the opposite bank, a couple of shadows headed down towards the river and off towards the edge of town.

‘Let’s go,’ I said to Prema.

‘Wait,’ he said. The roaring of the motor stopped. In the silence you could hear the crunch of hobnailed boots up on the bridge. Prema rose and pulled something out of his pocket. It was a hand grenade. He pulled the pin. Up on the bridge the black silhouettes of German soldiers stood out very sharp and clear, the noise of their boots resounding above the river. Prema stretched his arm way back, then pitched the grenade. Then he threw himself down on the ground beside me. I pushed my face in the wet earth. There was a big blast and chunks of metal came down, tearing leaves off the trees. Prema jumped up.

‘Run!’ he yelled. Then I was up and running too, along the river bank under the bridge. I saw that a piece of the railing had been blown out of the middle of the bridge and was bobbing in the water now and the air was dusty and full of smoke. We ran along under the bridge. Prema stumbled. Suddenly an SS man loomed up from behind the bridge pillar. He was right in front of me, wearing a camouflaged poncho. For a fraction of a second I looked at his wet helmet, the ammunition belt slung across his chest, and then I pulled back on the trigger. Flames leapt from the muzzle and I felt something jerk up sharply in my hands. The SS man leaned slightly forward and
then fell hard and we went by him without even stopping. He lay there, wet, big, strong, in full camouflage, his helmet shoved back, his eyes wide open, and his blond hair, wet from the rain and sweat, stuck to his forehead. We ran on and didn’t look back. Along the bank of the river, which reflected the brilliant colours of the western sky, we hurried away from the bridge. A machine gun barked behind us but I didn’t hear the bullets coming by. We scrambled up the slope to the path at the top and ran on to the first weir. There we stopped and looked back. A light cloud of smoke was still lifting from the middle of the bridge; at the town end of the bridge stood a tank. Its flaring machine gun was firing off into the woods somewhere. Nobody seemed to be running after us. Then a couple of helmeted figures jumped back on to the tank. It backed up and turned.

‘Step on it! Let’s move!’ said Prema. We turned and loped on down along the river bank, the western sky looking more fantastic than ever. The tank growled somewhere behind us and we ran on a little farther, then left the path and got down by the river again. Behind the weir the river was hardly more than a creek. Prema jumped into the water, I went in after him, and we waded over to the other side. After we’d clambered up the slope on this side, we took off across a vacant lot towards the courthouse. There wasn’t a soul in sight. Above the city, the castle glittered in the rays of the setting sun, its windows a smouldering gold. Below the castle, the lilacs glimmered like lanterns. We tramped along the foot bridge over the stream, past the place where women used to do their washing, then turned into Skocdopole’s warehouse. The corrugated-metal overhead door was shut. Prema took a key out of his pocket and unlocked the door.

‘What’s the plan?’ I asked.

‘We’re going to take the machine gun up to Sugarloaf Hill and wait for ’em there.’

‘You think they’ll head over that way?’

‘We’ll see.’ Prema pushed up the rumbling overhead door.

We went in. It was dark inside. Prema switched on the dim bulb in the ceiling.

‘Come on. Give me a hand with this thing,’ he said, slapping a crate that stood in a corner. ‘We’ll just tip this thing off.’

We tipped the crate forward and let it down. My eyes popped. On little steel wheels stood a heavy, well-polished machine gun. The fat cooling sleeve around the barrel glistened and its funnel-shaped muzzle looked deadly.

‘Where’d you ever get hold of that?’ I asked in amazement.

‘I had it down in the cellar. Ever since the mobilization.’

‘But where’d you get it in the first place?’

‘Robert got it when he was still around. Come on, let’s push it out.’ Robert was Prema’s cousin, the one who’d left the country. We leaned against the gun and pushed it out in front of the warehouse. It was awfully heavy. There was nobody around out there.

‘How’re you planning to get it up to Sugarloaf?’ I asked.

‘We’ll drive it up,’ said Prema, and vanished around the corner. I stood beside the gun, looking it over. It had a steel shield with a sight slit and two hand grips for aiming. This was really something. You could stage a real uprising with a thing like this. Like in that picture I’d seen in
Signal
or somewhere of communist bandits disturbing the peace and tranquillity of Warsaw by staging a bloody uprising and up on a rooftop, his cap shifted to the back of his head and a cigarette dangling out of his mouth, behind a machine gun just like this, one guy all by himself firing away down at the street. Prema reappeared pushing Skocdopole’s red motor-cycle. It had a sidecar

‘You going to put it in the sidecar?’

‘Sure.’

‘You think it’ll make it with all that weight?’

‘I know it will.’ We lifted the machine gun up and into the sidecar. The gun almost pulled us in after it, it was so heavy. The sidecar sagged over to one side.

‘Boy, I don’t know whether we’re going to make it up to Sugarloaf or not,’ I said.

‘Don’t worry. I’ve tried it,’ said Prema.

‘Tried it? When?’

‘Not with the gun, though. I weighed it and then drove up there with a load of rocks.’

The machine gun stuck way out in front and over the top of the sidecar a bit.

‘Okay. Hop on,’ said Prema. I got on behind him. We could hear a tank going down the main street.

‘The bastard – he’s going to jump to get away from us,’ said Prema. Then he jumped into the saddle, tramped hard as he gripped the handlebars, let the motor bang and pop for a minute, and then off we went. We turned the corner towards the high school and then boomed up the street. As we bumped over the cobblestones, I could feel my submachine gun thumping my back. Some guys were running from the underpass. Prema slowed down and yelled, ‘Some more Germans coming?’

‘Yeah,’ one of them shouted back as he kept right on running. They’re out by the customs house – big fight out there with the Russians!’

‘Good,’ said Prema, and stepped on the gas. We took the corner onto the main street at full speed, using the machine gun as a counterweight. The street led straight out past Serpon’s factory to Sugarloaf, whose crown looked blood red in the sunset. I could feel the motor chugging away between my knees as houses whizzed by on both sides of the road. Up ahead and a long way off a German tank disappeared around a bend. The cool evening wind slammed into my face and the springs in the motor-cycle seat bounced like mad. Holding on to Prema’s waist, I could feel the tight-stretched muscles of his back. The gun he’d slung across his shoulder dug into my chest. And then, for the first time, it struck me that I’d really fired after all. That I’d killed somebody. We tore on down the street that was as red with the sun as if the whole block was on fire. I couldn’t worry about it. That was life, that’s all. We shot across the cobblestones, past Serpon’s factory, past the last scattered houses, then up the highway towards the woods. Looking off to the side I could see the town below us in the valley looking very peaceful and the same as always, with lights in the windows, and, above the housetops, the honey-coloured crowns of the hills. Prema slowed down and turned
off on to a bumpy path. He stopped at the edge of the woods: we got off. There was a stretch of meadow between us and the highway now and at the bottom of the steeply-climbing highway lay the city glowing in the last minutes of the day’s light.

‘We’ll set it up here,’ said Prema. There wasn’t a soul in sight. We stood there alone at the edge of the woods beside the motor-cycle and then we lifted the machine gun out and set it down on the ground. Prema went a little way into the woods.

‘Good. The hollow’s right over here,’ he called. Then he reappeared and said, ‘Let’s put it here at the edge of the woods. Over by the bushes.’

We put our shoulders against the gun and shoved it towards the woods. There was a low clump of hazel bushes growing here. That’s where we set it down. Behind the bushes there was a long shallow dip in the ground. Prema fixed the gun in position and ran back to the motor-cycle. He took two boxes of ammunition belts out of the sidecar and dragged them back to where I was waiting in the hollow. We sat down by the gun and Prema locked in the ammunition belt. It was already almost dark just beyond the bushes; I felt like I was off camping somewhere. From way off in back of the town you could hear gunfire.