Widow Killer

by Pavel Kohout

  The one thing that continually nagged at him, and he repressed it with revulsion, was the method and the vessels the killer used—all startlingly similar to those of the Moravian zabijacka....

  It was past midnight when, his skin burning from an icy shower, he crawled under their eiderdown slowly and quietly, so as not to wake Jitka.

  "I'm not sleeping," she said.

  "Did I wake you?"

  "No, I couldn't fall asleep."

  Morava was immediately worried. "Is something wrong?"

  "No...."

  "So why, then?"

  "I'm angry at myself for wanting it... our child...."

  She was turned away from him as she said it, and he sat sharply up, turned on the light, and leaned over her to see into her eyes.

  "Jitka, please! Look at me."

  Her eyelids were scrunched up in pain, and she shook her head.

  "But we both wanted ... we both want it, Jitka."

  "It's always the woman, though. I really only wanted it because I was worried about you."

  "Well, so?"

  "I should have been thinking of the child. It's so defenseless."

  He managed at least to turn her toward him. Even in their mutual solitude he whispered to her.

  "It's in the safest possible place: inside you. And I'm right here."

  "But what if one day you're not? Look how useless I am."

  "It'll be over soon. You read our mothers' letters: they were sick up till the third month, then it vanished. Remember?"

  She was not comforted; instead she turned away from him and her heaving shoulders told him she was crying. He was at a loss.

  "Come on, Jitka! Please?"

  "No, Jan ... This is no world to bring a child into...."

  It was the first time their thoughts and feelings had diverged, and the change was sudden and dramatic. Stubbornly he sought the words that would convince her.

  "It never has been a good world. The pages of your family Bible testify to that. But it's been better, and it will be again. Who would have believed three years ago that truth would win out? And now we can almost touch it. It may be a few more months, but the Reich will collapse, it's in the air, as inevitable as spring; even Roosevelt's death can't change that. Peace will come, freedom will return, and our child will live in both of them."

  She said something; he didn't immediately understand.

  "What?"

  "But so will that monster! Catch him, Jan! He frightens me more than Hitler does. ..."

  Grete stepped into the bathroom as Buback began his soak in the tub. He had not heard her arrive over the din of the water and was all the happier to see her. Buback never knew for sure when and if she would come. After his first night with her, the longing to be back with her had never abated, despite his fatigue. He felt sure he had never had and could never have a better lover. However, a nagging feeling of impropriety held him back: Meckerle had entrusted her to him, counting on Buback to behave decently. But did that extend to covering up Meckerle's infidelities ... ?

  Just before midnight, his body had resolved his debate with his heart. Resolutely he left the German House bar and set off to see her. When he rang the bell he did not even have the chance to say his name before her voice broke in: "Where are you?"

  This time she was wrapped in the white bath towel he had worn the day before; it emphasized the length of her arms and legs.

  "What have you come to tell me?" she asked before he could speak. "That you betrayed his confidence? Or even mine?"

  "No," he admitted. "Just that it was pure rapture with you."

  "Aha. ... So then, Buback," she said, addressing him as a man would, dispensing, as he would soon find out, once and for all with his Christian name, "if you want to keep me, then grant me three wishes, as the old custom goes. One: no watches. It's bad enough that I have to be on time once a day. Two: I want to tell you the truth. I've been lying my whole life, playing a role, and before I die—which these days might be anytime—I'd like to find out what in me is real and what's a lie. And the third one you can discover on your own, since you're something of a detective."

  Then she opened the white material like a curtain.

  Encouraged by the way she gave herself to him again, he tried afterward to draw her closer as he used to with Hilde. However, the intensity of her resistance contradicted the passion preceding it. Although he owned her completely when she was in his embrace, he lost her entirely the moment she was dressed. Her estrangement took place with miraculous speed. She hardened like plaster of paris, he thought, and mentioned it to her: did she push him out of her mind before he even left her sight?

  She hated good-byes, she explained, and had decided that sorrow and disappointment would never rule her again; she'd seen too much of them already, finito! At the best possible moment, she would snap down the shade and hold it there until she was sure the joy would stay with her. How did she know? he asked. The way a bat knows, she laughed; she had learned to sense unhappiness and deception even in the dark, and to veer around them.

  "Space, Buback! I hate walls; I have to feel space around me."

  He understood that freedom was fresh air for her. Without it she would choke; she fought for it fiercely, like a drowning woman. Did she want to see him tomorrow? And how could he find out today? Maybe he should stop watching his watch and find out for himself when the time came! Would she take his extra set of keys? Why not, unless he needed them for another woman....

  Her "truth telling" was even more disconcerting. Soon she began to lay out her life story for him, loading one cigarette after another into her holder like ammunition clips. Her first lover at fifteen, a dancer only three years older, who held on for over ten years; it was a long, happy young love, Hansel and Gretchen, that would have lived on into friendship in old age, except for Martin Siegel. Like the actor? Buback asked, surprised. Yes, the very one.

  Siegel, the darling of Hamburg's female stars, suddenly fixed his gaze upon her, a novice. Hans shook with rage. On his twenty-fifth birthday she did not have a present for him. "I'll cut Seigel off," she promised, as a consolation prize. The oldest trick in the book, she now laughed; the famous thespian behaved just as Meckerle would years later. Instead of consoling himself with the next in line, he would not let go.

  Siegel rewarded her coldness with heightened attention; in a short while it changed to outright wooing. Passionate poems soon accompanied the flowers; he found her slenderness captivating. Bemused, she read them to Hans and was surprised to see how jealous they made him. Why was he so upset? she objected; Siegel was thirty years her senior, an old man. But if it bothered him that much, she realized, then why didn't Hans marry her? They'd send the artist a wedding announcement and if he still wouldn't leave her alone, Hans could challenge him to a duel.

  Hastily conceived, eagerly accepted by Hans and carried through by both of them with youthful verve. True, an insultingly extravagant bouquet arrived from Martin Siegel, but with a disarming note. He apologized for pestering her; now he knew her true feelings, and he wished the couple a long and happy life together. At once, she admitted, she felt disappointed that the game was over: it was she who had been defeated. When, two years later, the film weekly Ufy gave detailed coverage of Siegel's spectacular marriage to a beautiful young Berlin actress, envy entered the fray as well. Now she knew for sure that her Hans needed precisely those thirty extra years to treat her the way a man should. Her love for him was no longer young or happy; in fact, it wasn't even love anymore. It was then she began to deceive him.

  Over the years, many men had vied for her favor; now their time had come. She found a new game: men, she learned, fell head over heels in love with her. She managed to convince each of them that he was her chosen lover, while his competitors were no more than a pretext. If she had learned anything perfectly, it was how to pretend passion and to lie. Let Buback beware! For none of these men had been able to give her the pleasure she faked so expertly.

  Th
en she met Martin again.

  This time he came to Hamburg on tour, and she fretted over how to behave. Avoid him? Confront him? He solved the problem for her. When he spotted her, he came over and greeted her affably, as if they were close friends. He asked if he could invite the two of them to dinner. And she lied to him, saying Hans was not in town, but she would gladly join him. Martin was staying, of course, in the luxurious Hotel Atlantic; they feasted on lobsters with French wine, and then he returned to their old story. He hadn't been able to accept her refusal at the time; he could laugh at it now, but she had been the first woman to turn him down at fifty. For two years he was devastated, until fortunately he met Ursula. She was Grete's age, and that helped him get over it.

  She laughed along with him, but felt miserable. Suddenly all the time she had wasted with Hans hit her full force—she could have spent it with this enchanting man, whose skin was just like Hans's, and his eyes even younger! Soon the hotel carriage would come to take her home; she nearly wept at the thought.

  Once they had explained everything to each other, he asked if he could invite her to his suite afterward. There was champagne on ice waiting for him there every evening. In the elevator she decided to be his lover.

  "And this fellow I had written off three years earlier as an old man was the first to bring me to a climax and keep me there all night—like you, Buback.... Why do you look so embarrassed when I praise you? Come make love to me instead."

  He was only too glad to obey, but her past was beginning to affect him. Why? Hard to be sure, but he felt a strong urge to keep his own a secret. Once, he confessed the short but strong burst of feeling he had had for the Czech girl. The restaurant fiasco had done him more good than harm, he declared, because it broke down his defenses and led him from an imaginary lover to a real one. She laughed.

  "So I was a consolation prize! I'll make you pay! You'll never have me again!"

  He took it as a joke, but when he tried to make love to her again, she crossed her thighs and locked them together. He tried to overpower her; after all, he was sixty pounds heavier and had wrestled. But she thrashed about in his grip; he could not grab her hands or open her legs. He could not even roll her onto her back, because she would wriggle deftly from side to side. Gasping for breath, he talked to her, begged her, warned her he would hurt her. Just before he crossed the line into brute violence, he gave up. His week of euphoria over, he lapsed into a deep depression. He remembered the men she had teased and led on, and felt sure she had written him off for good. Had she gone back to Meckerle? After all, she hadn't shown up the night before.... Silently he released his grip so she could get up. Instead he was suddenly in her embrace.

  "Come on! Make love to me. Buback! More than ever!"

  Much later, when she seemed far more passionate about her cigarette than about him, he dared to ask why his truth, in contrast to hers, had deserved punishment.

  "Your fateful love was Hilde; mine was Martin. The rest of them don't belong here."

  Another thing confused him. It could happen at any time, except when making love—they could be listening to music, eating a meal, or just talking. Suddenly, she seemed to back away from him. A strange, bitter smile would appear on her face, and her mood would change as abruptly as the fickle weather of Sylt, where warm stillness gave way in seconds to an icy gale. When he mentioned it, she snapped irritably that nothing was wrong; she wasn't moody, just thinking! After all, she couldn't giggle at his every comment like an imbecile. If he wanted to stay with her—which was up to him—he should stop trying to force her to explain things and learn to deal with her as she was.

  He asked himself why he should bother with the whims of this woman, when their only connection was a mutual need to dull the pain of irreplaceable loss. He got his answer one night when she failed to show up. Although it was his first chance at a good night's sleep in days, he stared for hours into the darkness and tried to conjure up the sound of quick footsteps on the side staircase. With Hilde he had been a good husband; with Grete he was a complete man again. But he didn't feel like much of a man at the moment. There was no point in drawing it out: if she wouldn't explain why she stood him up, he would end it.

  But the next night, when she ran up the stairs to his door, his need overwhelmed everything else. And when she hungrily kissed him like before, he lost his desire to ask the question. So she continued to come or sometimes not to come, when she supposedly wanted to be alone, and when she came, she drank, smoked, talked, and made love to him even more insistently. Then, by the time he returned from the shower she was asleep again, as if deep in thought, chin propped on the back of her hand.

  Today, he dived into the bathtub, not knowing if he would see Grete or not, and took stock of their time together. He had known her less than thirty days, and yet she had altered the very fabric of his existence. She lent it meaning, he admitted; she gave him a goal, even if for now it was only to wait for her.

  Like before in Dresden, in the days of his professional innocence, he studied the reports of potential widow killers on a daily basis. First he would listen as the translators summarized them for him, then later, with the office door locked, he would read the Czech originals over in detail. He consulted with Morava and his group as to what was and was not worthy of investigation, and meanwhile, diligently and unfalteringly as a barometer, measured the pressure and temperature in the ranks of the Czech police. This morning for the first time he would be able to satisfy Meckerle's curiosity.

  "If there's a rebellion, the Czechs' trump card will apparently be the radio, Standartenfuhrer."

  "No kidding," his boss snorted in contempt. "Now there's an idea. Radio's been a target since the day it was invented."

  "I don't mean the Protectorate radio station; a couple of tanks and a round of grenades will take care of it. I mean the city radio station."

  "And what's that?"

  "The central office for civil air-raid defense under the Prague police. Besides the sirens, it can patch through to all the public loudspeakers in the city."

  "Wouldn't one tank and a single regiment be more than enough?"

  "For the office, yes. I'd assume the Czechs are clever enough to broadcast by telephone from any local switchboard."

  "Aha," Meckerle mused. "So what then? Cut the connections?"

  "We could turn them off from the main post office, but then we'd be risking our own people's lives; we don't have a separate warning system."

  The giant leaned forward in his chair and thumped his elbows down onto the table, which indicated he expected his subordinate to make a suggestion.

  "So, then."

  "With your permission I'll ask our technicians and their Czech colleagues to check the state of the equipment across the entire city grid. Our agent will be there to map out all the stations. Then he'll hand over a precise plan to the SS officer you designate, who will put together units that can occupy or decommission all the radio transmitters at once when the time comes."

  Meckerle sank back into the armchair.

  "Dictate the order. Have it brought to me for my signature."

  Buback snapped to attention.

  "Permission to leave, Standartenfuhrer."

  "No ..." His boss visibly wavered before finally deciding. "Do me one personal favor, if you would. Take this note to ... you know."

  "Yes," he said, hoping that he wasn't blushing. "Should I wait for a reply?"

  His oversized boss looked as pleased as a child.

  "Great idea, Buback! Thank you!"

  "Silly idea, Buback!" said Grete, freshly returned from a performance. Balancing on the edge of the bathtub, she skimmed through the letter.

  "Sorry," he said humbly. "Somehow I thought it might divert any suspicions he had—"

  "He's got other problems at the moment," she retorted. "He's under suspicion himself."

  An image flashed through his mind: the conversation about that secret meeting of high-placed Reich chieftains, which had de facto
contravened the Furhrer's orders.

  "Who suspects him, and why?" he asked tensely.

  "His wife. Because of me. That's the reason I have so much time for you.

  "But for God's sake, how did she find out?"

  Grete tossed the paper away, stood up, and began to undress gracefully, a warm smile on her face.

  "From me, love. I wrote her an anonymous letter. Now, let me into the tub."

  As always he read the daily papers on the night train. Still nothing! Meanwhile, for three long days they'd been going on about how the American president's sudden death would disrupt the Western alliance with the Bolsheviks. He didn't know much about politics, but was sure this was empty talk. The Reich was on its back, like a beetle that's been kicked over. He grinned at the thought of a street full of Krauts, their boots scrabbling in the air.