The Widow Killer (40 page)

Instead, a Czech policeman came out of the building, unstrapping his helmet and fingering a wayward lock of white hair. Then he picked up a megaphone.

“Citizens!” he rumbled. “The radio is ours. The Germans have capitulated.”

Fear turned instantly to intoxication; the crowd went wild.

He and his two companions waited curiously.

The policeman waved his megaphone around for a while until the throng quieted down.

“They have ceased their resistance under the condition that all Germans, employees and soldiers, are offered free passage without weapons down to the main train station.”

There were a few indignant shouts from the crowd.

“Citizens! This agreement was concluded at the behest of the Czech National Council. President Benes has named a new Czechoslovak government, but until they can return here from Kosice, which has already been liberated, the council is assuming control in Prague. We have been empowered to conduct similar negotiations with all German offices in the former Protectorate, first and foremost so that our beloved Prague can be spared the further ravages of war, and so that we can safeguard the fundamental human rights we will uphold again in the future!”

The cop was getting on his nerves more and more. Then he flinched when someone next to him whistled so loudly his ears rang. It was the balding Lojza, now shouting through cupped hands.

“Germans aren’t humans!”

He clapped along with Lojza and a couple of bystanders. They began to chant.

“Germans aren’t humans! Germans aren’t humans!”

The white-haired man strode purposefully toward them, droning on through his megaphone.

“Masaryk, the founder of our state, taught us that humanitarian ideals do not admit the collective guilt of races or nations. These men were soldiers; they followed orders and in spite of them capitulated. We cannot change the decision of the Czech National—”

“Then they should fuck off!” Lojza shouted at him. “We shed blood and we want an eye for an eye!”

He almost laughed at Lojza for not saying “a tooth for a tooth,” but it made him angry to see the policeman gaining the upper hand among the crowd. Those bastards are listening to him!

At that the first of the Germans exited the building, flanked by Czech guards. The foursome of ashen women in front—probably secretaries—caused some confusion, but the male employees, marked by white bands on their sleeves, drew whistles of derision. Their escorters smiled, as if acknowledging the onlookers’ annoyance, but implying the crowd must surely understand their position too.

Lojza was arguing wildly with the policeman; leaving them to their quarrel, he stepped forward to see better.

The soldiers had begun to come out. The orderly rows of men had neatly polished and buttoned their hated uniforms, and held their heads up as if on review. Their commander had made a mistake in thinking this would boost their morale; signs of defeat would have been more to their credit. Any feeble sympathy the onlookers might have had now disappeared.

Now, finally, there arose in him a strong, almost holy wrath against Germans, similar to the one his mother had instilled in him years ago against feminine infidelity.

Before anyone noticed, he raised his submachine gun, took aim so as not to threaten any of the Czechs, and began to squeeze the trigger. He heard another rifle at his side—must be Ladislav!—and in the corner of his eye saw Lojza fighting with the policeman.

The women shrieked, the whole transport dove against the pavement for cover, but shots rang out from it as well.

Those whore bastards had guns!

He was right!

The irritable policeman with the wispy white hair immediately deflected his aim by shoving his gun barrel into the air, but in the ensuing chaos he had so many other problems that he was soon distracted; it was necessary to round the prisoners up again, look them over and send them and their dead away as fast as possible. The cop had managed, however, to infect a decent-sized group of people who instantly turned against the three gunners. Among them was the four-eyes who’d irritated him over by the garbage cans.

“Degenerate!” Now the kid was taunting him with this completely nonsensical word. “Go back to the nuthouse; this is a democratic revolution!”

You’re the crazy one, he wanted to shout back; and a TRAITOR to our cause, who deserves the same treatment!

Should i just blow him away?

This time right in the heart, so as not to horrify the more delicate bystanders… He quickly came to his senses. Many in the crowd were just as well armed as he was.

In addition he remembered that he had a new name, but the same old face. There were clouds of police swarming about; what if by coincidence… ?

“Men,” he said to his companions, “the fun’s over, anyway. The hell with these cowards; there are plenty of Krauts left in Prague.”

“My love!” Grete said. “Oh, my love, finally! It’s been forever since I saw you!”

Of course her time dragged, while his flew, it seemed only moments since he had left her at the house. In the meanwhile, however, yesterday’s city had changed into a jungle which even the natives did not recognize.

The neighborhood called Pankrac, where he and Kroloff had been sent, was an exception; it was still firmly in German hands. A single barricade of derailed trams beneath the court building reminded them of the unrest; its builders had been driven down into the Nusle Valley. Immediately thereafter a merry-go-round of motorized watches went out, discouraging other potential barricaders.

Schorner’s heavy tanks would turn Pankrac into an extensive operations base. From here they could roll over the barricades in the valley, opening a passage to the city center and onward to the west. Aside from sporadic fire from various directions, however, there was no noise at all, and even after twilight only advance men on motorcycles came through. They mentioned barricades sprouting in the villages and towns around Prague, saying the colonnades had had to detour around through fields. These could not have presented any real obstacles to such powerful equipment, and thus further rumors were born. The prevailing opinion was that the Americans were approaching, which made a German advance pointless. Kroloff eagerly spread that afternoon’s news: In his imagination the Protectorate was to be the launching point for a future western alliance, including the Reich, against the hydra of Communism.

“And that’s the secret weapon,” he kept repeating, “the truly brilliant secret weapon the Furhrer providentially left us!”

The headquarters was filled with commanders from various lower units. They had nothing to do beside organizing patrols; there was no word from the approaching army and the Prague division just checked in every hour to ask what was new. Buback thought of Grete, alone and helpless. It gave him an idea for how the officers could usefully fill their time. There were thousands of German civilians in Prague; why not concentrate the ones in this corner of the city under military control, at least until the army could guarantee their safe passage out or their right to remain?

His idea did not strike anyone’s fancy. None of the officers seemed eager to complicate his own life unless ordered to do so; not even Buback’s authority as a Gestapo emissary helped. It was Kroloff who dealt the plan a final blow. The Furhrer’s memory, he parroted, could be best honored by unflinching adherence to the principles of Total War. The German citizens of Prague had been offered the opportunity to arm themselves a long time ago. The ones who availed themselves of it must have realized that every German apartment here could become a fortress. The ones who failed to do so had only themselves to blame; they had cut themselves off from the fellowship of a brave warrior nation.

Buback reminded him about the German woman who had saved the armored transporters trapped in the web of suddenly nameless streets that afternoon. If any of her Czech neighbors had spotted her, she would pay dearly indeed. After all, they couldn’t expect civilians in their apartments to behave like soldiers under fire, if only because they had no unified command or clear orders.

Aha, Kroloff trumpeted triumphantly, but a civilian evacuation would confirm the Czechs’ false hope that the Reich was capitulating, and could provoke a real uprising—the recent attempts by extremists had fortunately been just a pale imitation. After all, they’d just learned that one airborne torpedo had put an end to the unfortunate episode with the radio!

Buback did not prolong the argument. Better to preserve his authority for a real crisis situation. He would have to meet with Morava or Beran again to warn them of the problem; the haunting image of a murderer’s holiday, which Grete had used, was seared into his brain. Grete! He had to see her, to put his mind at ease.

Two highly unpleasant events put a temporary end to the confused discussion. The same Czech announcer who had recently been cut off in midword during the successful German air raid now unexpectedly resurfaced, apparently from a replacement studio. And the telephone stopped working in the local pub the German command had occupied. The Czechs therefore controlled the city switchboard. Buback seized the moment.

“You stay here as long as necessary,” he ordered Kroloff. “I’ll try to get to Bredovska. We’ve completed our mission, but I don’t like the fact that we don’t have orders covering various possible developments. What’s important is not which of us is right, but what sort of general directives have been worked out in the meanwhile.”

“They won’t bring you back through at night, and there may already be more than one barricade in the valley.”

Buback was amused to see Kroloff’s earlier outbursts of toughness give way to fear.

“I realize that. The surest way back is on foot.”

“But there’s a curfew.”

“All the better. I’ll take an escort as far as our outpost sentries. On the other side I’ll blend in in civilian garb.”

“How will you get back tomorrow?”

“The same way, unless a corridor has been freed up by then. You should know, Kroloff, why I was transferred here: I’m originally from Prague.”

The skull head was dubiousness incarnate, but as Buback’s subordinate, he had to accept the decision. His superior had them fetch the headquarters’ map of the district, which had the outposts marked. As he had assumed, the furthest was at the edge of Kavci Hory, not far from the little house. Once there, he nodded to his escort and to the sentries sheltering themselves against the beginning rain, turned up his overcoat collar, and set off into the darkness.

He shoved his work papers into his right sock, on the inside of the ankle and then into his shoe; the pass from Beran he hid in his left one. Just in case, he took the safety off his pistol. Swiftly he strode down the empty streets with their low houses. He stopped next door to check he was truly alone, and only then approached the house and pressed the bell as she’d requested: three short rings and a long one. He was caught off guard when the door opened immediately; swiftly he reached for his gun, but then he smelled her perfume, felt her hands pulling him inside, and heard her whispering voice.

At his request, she locked the door in the dark, but she did not let go of him. Before he could speak again, she pulled rather than led him up to the attic, telling him what she had been through. For hours she hadn’t been able to sleep, but neither could she wake up: Agitation followed exhaustion and then exhaustion overcame agitation again until she fell into a strange trance in which she could not move, but her visions seemed absolutely real. As if in a fever, she saw her whole life and finally her death, because suddenly she had become Jitka Modra, who had so trustingly exchanged fates with her.

“Suddenly I was the one who was fatally wounded here, but I wasn’t dead—you just couldn’t see it, and I was there as you put me in the coffin and you didn’t notice as I tried desperately to give you a sign, and then the lid slammed down and they banged the nails in and they picked me up and lowered me in and finally I managed to scream, just as the soil drummed down on the lid, so I made one last effort—I gathered all my strength and swung upright so forcefully the lid flew open and I tried to stand up in a hail of dirt, but I was too late, you see, it took away my breath and consciousness, and suddenly it’s all over, but my head hurts and I’m standing at the door and you’re ringing… Where have you been so long, love?”

When he found out she had not eaten at all, he wanted to fetch her something from the stores in the cellar, but she went with him and would not let go of him, as if drawing energy from his touch, holding him by the hand even as he sliced the rock-hard bread and opened military tins of sausage and cheese. On the way upstairs his foot hit an empty gin bottle he had found in the judge’s bathroom as they fled. He realized she had drunk it while waiting for him and then fallen asleep by the front door.

He forced her to eat and meanwhile decided to stay until morning; it would be easier and safer to get to the center during daylight anyway. When he undressed and lay down next to her, he felt for the first time that she was not interested in him as a man; she clung to him as if she were freezing and only animal warmth could save her.

He began to stroke her, slowly and lightly, with just the balls of his fingers, along her back, her shoulders, and as she gave in and opened herself to him, he moved along her elbows, thighs, feet, not missing a single spot on her body. He had never done this before, but he could feel how deeply it touched her, how her fear and agitation abated, how she gradually calmed down and her confidence returned.

“Ah, my sweetheart,” she sighed, “this is even better than making love…”

Then she took his hand and as shots rang out here and there in the distance, she suddenly took up her story again, like in the old days that now seemed so idyllic to him.

After Rome, where they finally reconciled thanks to the mysterious Sicilian, a nasty surprise awaited them in Berlin. Martin’s former father-in-law, a high-placed Nazi, arranged their assignment to a theater touring the East Prussian frontlines. Although this was a part of the Reich, it was, under the circumstances, an extremely inhospitable place; the specter of another Russian offensive hung over them constantly. The state of the German troops they performed for was ample evidence of what the Bolsheviks were like. These were no tanned sportsmen like in Italy, treating the war with the Anglo-Americans as a gentlemen’s competition even after their recent defeats. The East Prussian soldiers, in spite of their youth, reminded them more of old men. There was no thought of volleyball or soccer, and neither did they laugh at the famous comedian in their troupe; at camp they mostly slept or stared lifelessly off into space.