Widow Killer

by Pavel Kohout

  At five in the afternoon he gave his report to Buback first. The co-operativeness that had replaced the German's earlier primness on their trip seemed to have evaporated; he was practically sleepwalking. Finally Buback said he agreed with the suggestion in principle, but they would go over it together in detail the next day; now he had to leave.

  As Morava walked past Jifka to Beran, he managed to surprise her in the anteroom while she was on the telephone. He bent toward her and blew gently on her hair from behind, but when she quickly swiveled toward him he saw alarm on her face instead of a smile. She covered the mouthpiece.

  "Jan, stop it," she whispered forcefully.

  She was apparently dictating some statistical data to the presidium about office supplies—quite absurd as the apocalypse approached!— and in the meanwhile Beran returned. He read through each version carefully twice and gave them his blessing. Buback's delay meant their publication and distribution would have to wait a day, which disappointed him.

  "Let's hope the murderer isn't conceited to boot," Beran remarked gloomily. "If he's trying to send the world a message, we may be torturing him with this silence. He might strike again immediately to get the word out."

  "Then why did he burn the last one to cinders?"

  "The fire definitely started near the stove; he might not have closed it all the way."

  "So what else can we do?"

  Beran fixed him with questioning eyes.

  "You're a Christian, aren't you?"

  "Yes ... Czech Brethren...."

  "Then you can definitely do more than I can as an agnostic: pray. Sadly enough, Morava, the toughest hours in this job are dealing with maniacs like this one. He has to continue in this game until he makes the fatal mistake that betrays him. All we can do is wait; wait and not despair."

  He went with Beran to pick up the mail from Jitka, and so Morava only found out what had scared his beloved so badly as they came out late that evening onto Bartolomejska Street.

  "Buback came to see me."

  "Will he help your father?"

  "He didn't say..."

  "So what did he want?"

  "He invited me ..."

  Morava halted, confused.

  "What?"

  Shadows moved across the darkening Narodni Avenue. The trams and cars acridly belching wood gas had narrow cats-eyes scraped from their blued-out headlights. They stood face to face and could barely see each other.

  "He invited me to dinner," she finished.

  "When?"

  "Tomorrow."

  "Where?"

  "He said he'd pick me up if I liked."

  "And you said ... ?"

  "I said yes ..."

  He knew it was the only possible answer, and he also knew it was good; after all, he himself had arranged this opportunity for her. For Jitka? Now he was not so sure; maybe it was for Buback? His heart rose into his throat and so, for the first time, he knew what it was like to be horribly jealous.

  "Was that wrong?" she asked timidly.

  "No." He brushed it off bravely. "Buback is a German, Gestapo even, and I barely know him, but I don't think he's an extortionist or a rapist. When he told me that a bomb had killed his wife and daughter, there was no hatred in it, just grief. That surprised me. I'd say he'll help your father."

  They still stood on the corner of the narrow street, although they were both going the same way.

  "I'm still afraid ..."

  Morava was too, but as the man it was his job to provide solace.

  He clasped his palms behind her back, pressed her close, and tried to talk himself into believing it.

  "War or no war, German or not, even evil has to stop somewhere; that's why God made people like you, Jitka, whom no one would ever dare harm."

  Like evil itself howling with rage at how little he appreciated its omnipotence, sirens suddenly began to wail across the city. The closest, right above their heads, deafened them. The tram shadows stopped, and human ones hurried forward. Holding hands, the two young Czechs set off at a slow pace back to the air-raid shelter in the police complex, as alone as lovers on an evening stroll.

  The air-raid siren nipped Buback's problem in the bud. Before they even got to dance, he offered Marleen Baumann his arm and instead of leading her to the floor took her down to the cellar. Everyone politely made way for Meckerle and his spouse; they sailed to the steps as if in an air bubble while the other two moved elbow to elbow in a pack toward the mouth of the funnel. Fortunately the ominous hum of bomber squadrons did not materialize, and the crowd's nervousness did not grow into panic. He could just imagine the ladies' hysterics; most of them had never felt the daily breath of war.

  The woman beside him seemed made of sterner stuff. When he called for her at the relatively modern apartment house in Prague's New Town, where Meckerle's driver took him before picking up his boss, her appearance surprised him. She was not much shorter than he—the pants of her close-fitting suit showed her long legs to good advantage—but she seemed dainty, not only in body. Her face as well was unusually long and thin, accentuated by blond hair combed straight back over her ears, contrary to the current fashion, and caught at the nape in a short ponytail. He was intrigued by her reaction when he said he was honored to accompany her in the place of Colonel Meckerle. Without raising an eyebrow, she answered, "That's both gallant and prudent on his part. Dancing with me seems to exhaust him."

  The driver apparently knew her well, so they limited themselves to pleasantries. He knew no more about her when he presented her to the Meckerles; but he did catch himself admiring how easily and naturally she behaved when being introduced to her lover. So what, he thought, trying to quash an absurd feeling of sympathy; she's just playing a role.

  The giant's wife, whom Buback was also seeing for the first time (she was huge and square like a dish cupboard), seemed like a real shrew, probably the only person on this earth who knew how to keep Meckerle in line. From that perspective he understood his superior's choice of a mistress; she could hardly have presented a greater contrast. As the companion of an important colleague—which was how Meckerle introduced Buback—Marleen Baumann aroused no suspicions, and Meckerle's spouse accepted her with relative affability.

  While real champagne was being poured for some of the more important tables, the giantess continued her laments about the loss of their Dresden villa and her complaints about the drabness of life in Prague. None of them could get a word in edgewise. Mrs. Meckerle seemed to forget completely about the other woman's existence until after the state secretary's short yet interminable speech toasting the Fuhrer as creator of the Protectorate, when the first notes of a waltz sounded. Rising from her seat before her husband could ask for the dance, she turned to Marleen.

  "Shall we take the boys out for a spin, then?"

  The next second, with no warning, the sirens announced an air raid. The horrifying memory of February fourteenth and the sudden bomb explosions was still fresh. Even this group, with numerous experienced soldiers, was not immune to it as the crush of the crowd inched toward an illusion of safety. A proverbial deathly quiet reigned, broken only by the shuffling of soles. The bodily warmth of this mass in a heated building led to a greenhouse effect. Sweat stood out on the men's foreheads; powder trickled down the women's cheeks.

  Buback at first led his date to clear a path for her. After a while he felt the throng push her sharply against his back, and managed by turning around to get her in front of him. She realized that he was trying to make room for her to breathe, and gratefully turned her head back toward him.

  "Thanks...."

  A better reward was the pleasantly bitter scent of her hair, and he buried his head in it.

  The bombs had not yet begun to fall, and they maneuvered fairly quickly into the narrowest part of the flow to the head of the stairs, which led them down to an extensive complex of shelters. The spacious cellars of German House were furnished with relatively comfortable benches, and it turned out—when after t
he shock of heat there came a gust of cool air—that the climate was pleasant down there as well. Following the militia's orders, they pressed onward, passing a cellar alcove restricted to VIPs; towering above the others in a gray haze was Meckerle, talking to State Secretary Frank. Buback was suddenly glad that his boss had not noticed them.

  He and Marleen Baumann ended up among unfamiliar couples in a cozy corner, where there was only seating for two. There she thanked him again.

  "You were both polite and skilled. What a shame we didn't get to dance; you must be good on the ballroom floor."

  "Don't be sorry," he said directly. "I'm sure I would have disappointed you."

  "You don't dance?" she asked, surprised. "I wouldn't have thought it of you."

  For the second time in twenty-four hours he repeated the fact that he had suppressed for months in the vain hope that what went unsaid might not be true.

  "I lost my family in an air raid last year."

  And then he added quite superfluously: "I don't feel ready for dancing yet." He gazed into her gray eyes and saw there the same sympathy that had so surprised him yesterday in the young Czech.

  "Please accept my condolences, Herr Buback. You have no idea how well I understand. My parents and brothers perished in the first raid on Hamburg. A stroke of bad luck that both my brothers were on leave at the same time. I lost my husband last year in the retreat from East Prussia. But as opposed to you, I've lost the strength to mourn. It's not just that as a woman, I can't allow myself to; to be honest, I didn't really feel like it. With him, at least..."

  She gestured with her head in the direction where her expansive lover was taking cover with his wife and the cream of party and government society. Then she fell silent, rooting energetically through her handbag until she found a gold ladies' cigarette case and a matching lighter. She offered him the box.

  "It's not allowed down here," he said, drawing her attention to a notice on the wall.

  "But they"—once again that sharp motion toward the leaders' sanctuary—"they were smoking."

  "Quod licit Iovi... Fine for the brasses, but not for the masses," he translated freely.

  She swore softly like a man, threw the items back in her bag, and glanced around the cellar. This was his first opportunity to really look at her. What he saw surprised him. Why would a beast so powerful that even his equals trembled before him choose precisely this one—out of all the young German women running around Prague? And was she young? In the darkened entranceway of her building, in the half-lit car, even in the ballroom where she sat next to him, her slenderness helped her pass as a young girl. The bright light of the shelter, however, mercilessly revealed the truth. Thirty? Thirty-five? Even more? The energy of her every movement spoke against it.

  In any case, she was the exact opposite of the Germanic ideal of womanhood as portrayed by the Freie Korperkultur. But she was equally unlike his Hilde and the Prague girl he had invited tomorrow... where indeed? And what would he say to the girl once they had covered her father's case? Would he invite her home? How would she react? And how should he behave? If she agrees? If she refuses?

  As he pondered these questions, he must have been staring intently at Marleen Baumann, who brought him back to the present with an unexpected question.

  "You take me for a better sort of whore, don't you? If not for a worse sort?"

  Put on the spot, he stammered a confused protest. Surprisingly it satisfied her.

  "I'm glad to hear it. You see, I'd been alone for so long. I find most German men repulsive. At least he"—again she nodded her chin in that direction, and Buback sensed that she was avoiding his name and title—"isn't a gutless ass-kisser."

  She gave a gruff laugh, which matched her dainty appearance as poorly as her vocabulary did. In fact, her whole face, as he could now see up close, was a collection of disturbing details. Her dove-colored eyes sat strikingly far from one another; eyebrows rising from the bridge of a large nose drooped to the outer edges of her face in an arc reminiscent of clown's makeup. She had a long chin, a forehead that was too high, and very narrow lips set quite deep beneath her nose, which further increased the sharpness of her profile when she stopped speaking. Suddenly he noticed an oblique line falling from her left earlobe almost across her whole throat; how did he miss it earlier? Oh, of course! She had probably covered it with powder. This wrinkle or scar of a hard-to-distinguish shade between light green and pale yellow indicated a secret.

  As if reading his last unspoken thought, she said: "Anyone who hasn't seen me in a year doesn't recognize me, Herr Buback. In the course of a few days I lost my reason for living and came to know every kind of depravity on earth. When I realized that I could not kill myself—because more than anything I fear my own death—I learned to survive. I can lie so perfectly that even you would believe me if I wanted you to."

  "Why don't you want me to?" he asked her, purely to keep the conversation going; he was completely captivated by his new discovery. Yes, her whole face was disturbingly mysterious; as soon as she spoke she changed beyond belief. Her lips became her dominant feature, suddenly so full that they surrounded him, and all her apparent defects coalesced at once into an image far from "beautiful" in the ordinary sense but nonetheless provocatively attractive.

  Erwin Buback now knew why his boss kept her. That face was omnipresent; you could not overlook it nor, apparently, forget it.

  "Why don't I want you to?" she repeated, and laughed again. "Apparently I trust you."

  "What did I do to deserve that?"

  "As long as fate lets them exist, men only half as interesting as you," she said to his face without a speck of coquetry, "can live in the present moment, here in our twilight of the gods, day by day, night by night. But you've stayed faithful to your old loves. I admire it all the more for being incapable of it myself."

  He remembered the young Czech woman again, but he did not have the strength or at the moment any reason to correct her. Instead, he gladly acceded to her next request, and began to talk about his wife and daughter. She listened to him attentively, her palms planted firmly on the bench, and he soon noticed the burden of his grief lightening and dispersing slowly into his own words, melding painful facts into comforting memories.

  The Allied squadrons crisscrossing the Protectorate held them in the cellar until almost midnight. When the all clear sounded, a thoroughly bored Meckerle had to go off to bed with his wife, who had developed a headache in the cellar air. He managed to pay his respects to his mistress and convey to Buback that his personal chauffeur would return for them. Although the party was starting to gain steam again, both of them understood what the message meant. When later he kissed her hand at the car door and she realized that he was not coming with her, she used the curtain of sound from the motors and voices to ask a further unexpected question.

  "Would you be interested in meeting again, when I have time?"

  "No," he answered forthrightly. "The colonel made it clear that was out of the question."

  "I'm not his property," she announced flatly. "I'm no one's, not anymore. I'm a free spirit. If some day you feel ready to listen to me the way I listened to you today, you know where to find me. And don't worry, our number one spy won't find out."

  During the whole trip home on foot—an impulse he'd suddenly succumbed to—Buback found himself unable to concentrate. He felt torn asunder: He belonged to his old love, as he headed towards new hope, but out of the blue he had found a strange affinity with this unknown creature, who had captured the heart of the Protectorate's third-in-command.

  Hedvika Horakova found a friend at the graveyard. For three months she had stood alone, twice a week, at the grave of her spouse, killed by a toppled crane during the Totaleinsatz—the total deployment—in Essen. Then, one February day, a fresh hole greeted her from nearby. The next day it had been filled in, and she found a sister in grief sobbing over it.

  They hit it off right away. On the fourteenth of February, Marta Pavlatova h
ad been making lunch for her husband, who was on the afternoon shift at the Pragovka factory. As usual, he was hanging around the kitchen getting on her nerves, so she chased him off to the grocery store on the opposite corner for their potato rations. From the kitchen's second-floor window she could see him leaving the store with a full string bag, when all of a sudden a giant invisible hand picked her up and carried her across the apartment; the weight of her body smashed open the door into the hallway and landed her with a blow against the door onto the staircase.

  When she managed to stand up and scramble back into the kitchen, the view from the dusty window opened onto a completely unfamiliar street. The grocery store building was split in two; its left half had collapsed into the small square. Only afterward did she notice that the rag doll lying in the center of it was wearing her husband's pants and sweater.

  Hedvika's tragedy was a hundred days older; she could lend Marta courage. Both were twenty-seven; both had waited to start a family until after the war and were now left alone. They thanked fate that they had met. Hedvika sewed at home; the cinema owner had taken Marta on as an usher. For the moment, they had no reason or desire to look for new partners. Every Wednesday and Saturday before noon they would meet at the Vysehrad cemetery, which was roughly the same distance for both of them—Marta from Pankrac and Hedvika from Emauzy—clean up the gravesites, and set off along the ramparts of the old castle. They would stroll around the accessible portions, taking in the panorama of their native city, which was pulling free from winter's grip just as slowly and unhurriedly as spring approached.