The Widow Killer (32 page)

“So, back again,” Morava ordered. “The needle has returned to the haystack.”

“To Bartolomejska?” Litera asked.

“No, home.”

He realized two pairs of eyes were fixed on him, and for a moment despair overwhelmed him as he thought of the other half of his body and soul freezing in one of Pathology’s sliding drawers. Then awareness of his obligation resurfaced and sheathed him in its armor, protecting him from hurtful memories and thoughts. He checked that he had his old keys and specified: “Back to the dormitory.”

They rode back silently and swiftly. Their side of the road was empty, while an uninterrupted column of military vehicles dappled generously with staff cars and moving vans rolled westward toward them from Prague.

The yellowed centers of the blue-painted headlights passed by Morava, as indolent as the eyes of giant cats.

“Judges!” Grete snorted contemptuously. “They judged humanity, but didn’t quite manage to hang all of it, so now they’re fleeing its revenge. Your neighbor, for instance, took to his heels as soon as it got dark, like a criminal. So, downstairs to his stores, love; we’ve drunk our reserves and I’m thirsty.”

“I don’t have the keys,” Buback responded confusedly.

“And don’t tell me: You’re a man of the law! Except this isn’t robbery; it was all stolen goods to begin with. Doesn’t matter, I’ll go myself. These might be the last treats we get.”

In the end, of course, he accompanied her down and broke the backdoor window with his elbow. Then they reached in and turned the key from inside. The open, half-empty cupboards and half-full drawers bore witness to a hasty departure. The judge either had not been a drinker or had taken the remaining alcohol with him. However, they found unbelievable riches in the icebox and the pantry: a hunk of Swiss Emmenthal, a slab of bacon, sardines, and nuts. Behind the teapot they finally discovered a bottle of English rum and two packs of American cigarettes. Buback shook his head. What a mockery of their insistence that all right-thinking Germans should hate the products of enemy civilizations!

They made themselves some grog with the rum and hot water, and their tension slackened; after the second glass they were pleasantly relaxed.

“Love,” she said, returning to her theme, “how long do you intend to stay here on this Titanic? Everyone’s already in the lifeboats.”

“Not everyone. A couple of people think once you’ve made your bed you should lie in it.”

“What bed did you make,” she flared at him. “You hunted criminals and murderers.”

“Wasn’t it you who pointed out that I let the biggest ones go unpunished? You were right; I even applauded them! Just last year I ruined my last visit with Hilde in an argument where I took the Furhrer’s side against her.”

She grinned bitterly.

“I’m a fine one to lecture you. I fought my battles in the bedroom. Buback, how could an entire nation fall so far so fast?”

“An epidemic of obedience. The greatest scourge of mankind. A couple of people think up a recipe for a happy future and shout it so loud and long that all the lost souls take up the cause. The careerists follow. And suddenly they’re a force that no longer clamors and offers; instead they demand and direct. Disobedience is punished, obedience rewarded: An easy choice for the average person.”

“And then comes the bill.”

“Yes. And once again it’s time to pay.”

“But haven’t the two of us paid enough, love? Don’t we have the right to get off the boat? Except it’s harder for you than for me, I guess; the military police are waiting for you.”

“That’s not the issue… What bothers me more is that suddenly I don’t know what honor is and what’s disgrace.”

“Can we stop the riddles? I’m not in the mood just now.”

“Schorner intends to turn Prague into a fortress.”

“Then it’s high time to turn tail like the jackass downstairs. We both know what happens to fortresses. And you were assigned here; why can’t you go back?”

“To where?”

“For God’s sake,” she snapped, “couldn’t you think of something and arrange it?”

“Grete, you’ve had this German guilt far longer and harder than I have. Maybe I can mitigate it.”

“You!”

“I was born in Prague. And it’s the last city in central Europe whose beauty is still intact.”

“And you’re going to save it!”

“Calm down! Listen to me. I’m working with the Czechs, after all. I could warn them in time.”

She stopped short. Her aggressiveness ceased; the thought intrigued her.

“So do it.”

It’s not real till you say it, he chanted to himself for the last time, but now there was no way out.

“No matter what language you speak, that’s called treason, Grete.”

“Aha… and who are you betraying?”

“Well…”

Now he stopped short.

“Your homeland, maybe,” she snapped. “That lunatic and his henchmen betrayed it a long time ago. Their secret weapon was a con game for the softheaded from day one, and you’ll excuse me, but they’ve made a fuckup of the war—how long do you intend to keep this up, Buback?”

He felt awkward, but couldn’t not say it.

“I took an oath.”

“Loyalty to Fuehrer and the Reich, right? But he’s stone dead and the Reich’s practically fallen apart. Anything else you’d like to die for? Or anyone? Maybe you’d care to show your devotion to the Nibelungen, to have the honor of falling in battle for Schorner and Meckerle? Now that’s what I call a disgrace! Disgrace? Try stupidity!”

She poured herself a nearly full glass of rum and topped it off with boiling water.

“If you think you can prevent those sons of bitches from destroying this city too, then you should tell this Morava of yours what you know; you made him out to be a decent person, and he looks it, but there’s got to be some give-and-take!”

He did not understand. She bristled again.

“Do you need me to point out the obvious? We’re in a lion’s den. All Prague knows this is the German quarter, and believe me, the lions will come—excuse me, did I say lions? More like hyenas!— as soon as they sense Germany is flat on its back. And for them you’re Gestapo and I’m a Kraut whore; there’ll be no mercy for us. My love, why leave me hanging here? Do you want me to end up like those widows?”

He was shocked by the thought.

“Why would you—?”

“The murderers’ holiday is already starting, love. They’re flying in, converging on the feast like bugs on a lamp; the killing is never better than when your nation has its moment in the spotlight, and Germany is proof of it.” Then she spoke calmly and practically, as he’d never heard her before.

“I’m a silly woman and can’t understand how a man of your position can and should act in this situation. But I’m depending on you to find a way to save us both in time. At the very least your Czechs owe me something.”

As if reading his furtive thought, she continued.

“It was fate’s doing, not mine, that she died; her death isn’t on my conscience, nor should it be on yours. Good night.”

She suddenly rose and headed for the bathroom.

“I want to hold you,” he said.

“Not today. Your weakness is catching. I need your strength, so I’ll have to hold off. I’d rather go home, but he might be there, so let me stay, but pretend I’m not here.”

He bounced up so quickly that he was able to block her way.

“Grete! Everyone has the right to weak moments. And that’s what the other person is—”

“Don’t count on it,” she said brusquely. “I have to be strong when I’m alone. When we’re together, it’s your job. That’s why I love you.”

“Get up, Jan!” Jitka said. “Enough sleep; time to go to work.” He could sense the touch of her face, which had moved next to his, but he did not want to open his eyes; those morning visits with her in the unknown reaches of sleep were now the most important moments of his life. He had no idea how he could have ever woken up alone and spent whole days without knowing they would fall asleep that night together. “Jan,” Jitka called again, “time to get up, beloved; today’s a big day for you!” He pretended he was sound asleep, so she would use her tender wiles, brushing lips against lips and blowing on his closed eyelids. Instead, she said despairingly, “Jan, enough already; go find that monster—he did kill me, you know!”

He blinked. On the night table was a daily calendar, frozen in time at February 14. The woman he had escorted home and stayed with ever since was dead, and he was hugging his mother’s old featherbed in his dormitory room near Number Four. He stood up, so as to be entirely awake before hopelessness hit, did a couple of stretches, and let the cold shower pound into him. By the time he had finished brewing his mother’s rose-hip tea, his defensive armor had closed around him again, impervious to thoughts of the body in the dark icebox.

He was in her service and had to fulfill the task she had set him; then he’d see what happened.

He got only Matlak and Jetel for his plan and was satisfied. He didn’t see Beran or even look for him. Most of his colleagues, who would normally have been around, were absent. Even a simpleton could tell that the brain stem of the Czech police was securing itself against the danger of another attack.

He realized that he had not seen a single German uniform on his way over. He had seen the film
The Invisible Man
several times before the war, and it always gave him goose bumps. The Germans, hidden behind the walls of former schools, universities, dormitories, and hotels now serving as barracks and offices, were suddenly more malevolent than they had been in full view. It reminded him of the stony plain above his village, where what appeared to be an innocent heap of brushwood would in the blink of an eye become a tangle of attacking vipers. Prague now seemed much the same way.

He therefore agreed at once when Buback offered to come along; the German could vouch for them in any confrontations with his countrymen.

The four of them formed a chain as each train arrived from Plzen, and questioned all the passengers. Most knew each other by sight from traveling to and from work. No one knew the man in the policemen’s photograph.

Between trains Morava sat on a bench beneath the roof of the first platform and stared straight ahead. The others left him alone, and he tried to distract himself by fixing his thoughts on the insignificant. He calculated the length and height of the buildings opposite, counted the crossties in his vision, concentratedly followed the crooked flight path of one of the birds in a flock circling above the station.

At noon the others brought him bread with some kind of spread, in the evening a warm potato pancake; after the last train they took him off to sleep and brought him back before the first one the next morning. All of this he sensed as if in a dream, one he left only when another train arrived from Plzen. And no one, not one passenger, recognized that face.

“It’s the same people as yesterday,” Matlak said near evening.

Morava could see that himself. Rumors of the hunt for the widow killer had spread. When they saw the four men with photographs, the passengers would shake their heads or hands, and the men were stung by the first sharp retorts: Why were they still hanging around doing nothing? By now even that killer must know where they were. But Morava never raised an eyebrow or doubted his decision. The first thing Beran had taught him was patience.

That evening it paid off.

It was the novice Jetel who excitedly brought over an older man returning from his shift at the Beroun locomotive depot. Yes, he confirmed, he remembered the man well; on Sunday he had seen him waiting for the night tram with his coworker Karel Malina. He himself had waited behind a tree, because Malina was a well-known motor mouth. He’d been glad enough to be rid of him on the train; Malina had gone to look for matches and never came back. At the last moment, the railway worker had boarded the rear car of the tram and dozed all the way to the last stop. No, he didn’t know where Malina lived; surely the police could find out?

Malina’s other potential acquaintances had long since left the station. The only thing left to do today was follow up the lead. There were eleven Karel Malinas in Prague. When Morava began to plot a route for visiting them, Buback raised his first objection.

“It’s quite late and we could start a panic. They’ll think it’s the Gestapo.”

He stared in surprise at the German.

“Yes,” he said, “you’re right, thanks. Good night.”

In his room, it seemed he barely closed and opened his eyes only to find it was morning. He broke through the horrible moment of awakening when she died for him again, and set off on the trail of her murderer. As a good morning, Matlak and Jetel announced that only the German newspapers had published Rypl’s picture. The Czech papers had objected, saying that the Gestapo had used this method a few times already to try to catch Resistance workers; they could not risk taking the Germans’ bait in the eleventh hour.

As they left, Morava noticed a further gesture from Buback: he let the lanky Matlak have the front seat instead of himself, so he would not be cramped in the back of the car. Matlak took advantage of the language barrier to make a biting comment in Czech. “So they’ve finally decided they have enough ‘living space’.”

At the depot they easily obtained Malina’s Prague address. Alarmingly, the repairman had not shown up for work yesterday or today, and had not notified them why. The personnel department clerk added that, sadly enough, this was a common occurrence these days; people find a thousand excuses, and this was probably just the beginning.

For Buback’s sake Morava conducted the conversation in German, and the clerk in his shirtsleeves suddenly wagged his finger at the liaison officer, like an old-fashioned teacher lecturing an unruly pupil.

“You promised Europe order, and you leave behind havoc and anarchy!”

Buback knew the four Czechs were waiting to see what he would say to this bold reproach.

He looked briefly from one face to the next, ending with the clerk’s.

“If an individual can apologize for a whole nation, then I hereby do so.

No one said anything to that, and he was glad when Morava gave the order to leave. On the way back to the car he overheard another of Maflak’s sotto voce comments to Jetel.