by Pavel Kohout
He felt himself calming down, although home was still more than an hour away. He was alone in the compartment; the majority of travelers were commuters who had debarked by the time they reached Beroun. No one boarded the train there for Plzen; it was almost midnight. Despite the shock he had gotten, he wasn't tired. Not in the least! He was content.
I'm reaching my stride!
There was no denying he'd made some nearly fatal mistakes. That whore was the worst one yet. He'd latched onto her by the cemetery as she hurried off to satisfy her lust. She was quiet as a mouse, the way she'd retreated so obediently, cowering with the knife at her throat. Then she did something he hadn't expected. She threw open a door. Through it he could see a bed.
"Robert!" she shouted, and jerked away from his hand with such force that he dropped his knife. At the same time a man emerged from under the featherbed, naked but amazingly tall and with good biceps.
He broke out in a sweat; panic crippled him and drowned out everything else. Fortunately, it gave him time to realize the guy had no idea what was happening. Meanwhile, the woman, in an awkward retreat, tripped over the low footboard and fell on her back.
That was enough to allow him to bend down, grab the haft of his knife just below the long, thin blade, and then just stab. He reached the man's heart in the first blow. It took three, maybe four for the woman; he didn't count them. He managed to kill her even before the man's body collapsed across hers. Interestingly enough, neither of them screamed.
He made sure he was in no danger from either of them and then sat down beside them on the bed. Eventually he caught his breath and stopped perspiring. All the while, he muttered curses at himself. Why did he lose his head so often? Where did the soldier in him go? He used to keep his cool even under fire. He'd have to get back on track....
On the other hand ... how could he have known she'd already have a new stud in the bedroom?
He looked at the dead man's face now and realized it wasn't that of an adult. The height and broad shoulders were deceptive; the face was almost childlike, unmarked by great tragedies or passions. Suddenly he felt sorry.
That wasn't what i planned!
This was a depraved relationship, and the boy was clearly the victim; that was why he was punishing them. And he would not stop ...
UNTIL I WIPE THEM OUT!
A while later he threw off the cape and put down his postman's bag. Methodically he proceeded through his task. The unfortunate boy he laid out in the bed, covering him up to his chest with the featherbed, unstained side up. He closed the boy's panicked eyes so that it looked as if he were still asleep.
As he put the cursed soul into his satchel next to the unused straps, he decided to change his appearance again. Someone might wonder why an unfamiliar postman had been in the building so long. Then he remembered the caretaker on the embankment, still the only person to have gotten a good look at him. Maybe he should stop by today? No, not worth the risk; they might be watching.
I WILL GET HIM, ONE OF THESE DAYS!
After a short search he found a ball of hemp rope. He turned the cape inside out, wrapped the satchel in it, and tied it up, crisscrossing it with the twine into a shapeless bundle like the ones carried by countless Eastern refugees wandering across the Protectorate. He could not change his postman's pants, but the boy's jacket, with the sleeves turned up, obscured its origins.
As usual, he met no one in the building and felt sure the passersby outside were paying no attention.
As he finished his paper in the train, he was more interested in what they would say about him tomorrow than about the course of the war after Roosevelt's death. However, he was sure of one thing: the decay of morality had spread so far—he'd witnessed it personally today— that he had to change his plans.
I'll punish them every week!
Once again he felt an unpleasant tingling as he got off in Plzeh. Recently, food inspections had become more frequent on trains from the countryside. He hadn't yet met one on an express from Prague. Fortunately the platform was empty. And anyway, he grinned to himself, what could be so interesting about a single solitary pig heart?
Between lovemaking and her stories they sipped champagne; right at the beginning she'd hauled three cases of it over in a taxi, Meckerle's entire stock. He set up a military storehouse at my place, she said mockingly, and Buback did not dare to ask the next logical question.
She was sitting on the bed again, hugging her knees, wrapped in a large white towel as usual. He realized from the beginning that she was obsessed with cleanliness; she showered several times a night, and taught him to do the same. How had she done it near the front? he'd asked. She always chose lovers with running water, of course! And during the retreat? Suddenly she turned ashen.
"I told you I'd rather die than talk about that."
He would have been glad to be finished for the night; the role of confessor, hearing the details of her love life, was mentally exhausting. He did feel honored, but at times her directness seemed almost cruel. She evidently wanted to emphasize the casual nature of their relationship, but why so bluntly? That night she seemed determined to finish the story whose beginning he already knew.
Grete managed to make Martin Siegel fall in love with her a second time and after a short tempestuous affair he even divorced on her account. Her own marriage had a catastrophic ending: amiable Hans, who up till the last believed he and Grete would reconcile, fell under a subway train on the way back from family court. She could only guess as to whether it was an accident or suicide—it happened while she was riding up the escalator. She was so in love with Martin, though, that this shameful tragedy affected her far less than the sudden change she saw in her relationship with Martin.
The banal story's sudden change into drama managed to raise Buback's weary eyelids.
"What change? Did he find someone else?"
"No, that wasn't it. During our whole time together he never deceived me, not once. But I was the last in a line of conquests that always ended with him returning to his true love, the theater. I should have seen how easy it was to pry him away from his wife—it was more like I set her free. When he was learning and playing a big part, it was as if I didn't exist. Othello and Mercurio occupied him far more than any passing fling could; a woman I could have buried, like any other competitor. Martin, that fantastic lover, stopped needing to make love when he was with me. Fleeced a second time! And what's worse, I was still just his mistress; 'we've both had our marriages already,' he'd say, 'haven't we, darling?' "
Then war broke out for real. Actors of Martin's caliber did not have to enlist so long as they joined troupes entertaining German soldiers behind the front lines. Grete forced him to arrange for her to go as well, singing in a group with the depressing name Freudenkiste—"Box o' Joy." She thought that, removed from the surroundings where he was king, he would come to appreciate her presence. They could return to their starting point, those rapturous nights in Hamburg. The director of the group, however, soon struck Martin's modest handful of famous monologues, which had been his substitute for performing the classics; they bored the soldiers. Instead, he was condemned to recite trite little verses, meant to give men who used traveling whorehouses for sex an analogous replacement for emotions.
Martin was unbearable. Because he couldn't punish that Nazi, she said—lighting a new cigarette while Buback rubbed his eyes quickly, so she wouldn't see—he tormented her instead. He must have known how she longed for him and he must have wanted her himself at times, but he had an inhuman self-control; crawling into bed, he would turn away from her and fall asleep without so much as a good night.
Desperate and vengeful, what else could she do but have an affair— but with whom? Even after days of bathing in the Lido, the soldiers and officers currently recuperating in Rome after their Sicilian battles stank of God knows what, most likely death. And she would rather have died than sleep with a troupe member. Then she saw her chance.
After a performance fo
r their Italian allies, she received a bouquet of roses. A calling card in it requested her to accept a supper invitation: they could meet at the Hotel Dei Principi, a chauffeur was waiting outside in a silver Lancia—cordialemente, Gianfranco Bossi. Ordinarily she would have refused, if Martin had not remarked that she ought to go; this might just be the supermale who could finally slake her nymphomania. She changed and went.
The driver in livery delivered her to the doorman, the doorman took her to the concierge, the concierge brought her personally to the head-waiter. She ended up at a table where a slender, dark man with unbelievably green eyes rose to greet her; he could have been thirty or fifty. If she would like, he said, kissing her hand, they could take dinner together here. With her consent, of course, he would be pleased to invite her for dinner at his home. She liked what she saw, and, furious at Martin, she accepted.
Home, she continued raptly, as if seeing it once again, was in an old palace filled with servants, whose silence reminded her of ghosts: a scene from a film, with silver, candles, the music of a hidden quartet. And after a feast like that, there would have to be a canopied bed.... Was she boring him, she asked Buback. Of course not, he said swiftly, for fear of being left alone the next evening.
The Italian remained virtually silent; he ran the dinner with gestures of his handsome fingers. She did the talking: about Hamburg and Berlin, about books and the theater, ever more intrigued to know how this man, evidently an aristocrat, would negotiate the next bend in the road toward their evident goal.
He did it quite differently than she expected. At a certain point he stood up, walked over, helped her pull out her chair, and offered her his arm. Then he led her out past the entrance hall to the door of the palace, where the blacked-out vehicle was waiting to take her back.
He invited her night after night, four evenings running; only the food and music changed. Once the last cup had vanished from the table, the music disappeared as well. From the hallway, the sounds of a small fountain burbled into the dining room. He no longer moved, just gazed at her. Confused, she spun the conversation onward alone, until he rose from the table.
They had two days remaining in Rome when it dawned on her: the moment silence descended, she fell quiet as well. They looked at each other mutely for several long minutes.
He knew she was leaving in two days' time he remarked suddenly; he would return to Sicily the next day. But the Allies are there already, she replied, shocked. Oh really, he smiled; what's the difference, a change might be nice. He would like her to accompany him. As? As his betrothed.
She was flabbergasted. But she was here with her husband!
The Italian was apparently well informed. The actor wasn't really her husband, though, was he? No, not officially; they hadn't felt it necessary to formalize things, but she had been with him several years already. So why did he let her go out at night with a stranger? If she were Sicilian, her brothers would have killed him long ago. He meant his offer seriously and would prove it by confiding in her: he was a member of an old noble family here on a secret military mission. Couldn't she stay here with him? Early tomorrow he'd arrange for her luggage and documents.
No, she said, no, she was truly sorry. No tonight or no forever? he asked. He is my fate, she whispered. Only death can release us. In a rush of emotion she then asked if he would like her to stay tonight, at least. He nodded almost solemnly and led her up a marble staircase and along hallways with ancestral portraits; the palace was desolate— and then there it was, the canopied bed, and she felt an indescribable gratitude to him for the way he had exalted her and confirmed her uniqueness. She had never made love more passionately—to be precise, she corrected herself, she had never pretended passion more expertly.
Before she began to get dressed, the Italian made a cross of kisses on her mouth, breasts, and lap.
At home she woke Martin. She repeated everything that was said in the dining room and waited to hear what he would say. And he... even now she swallowed angrily and fumbled for another cigarette— he congratulated her and asked if she needed help packing.
"And I began to hit him, Buback! I hit and kicked him. Until it hurt me just as much. I was punishing part of myself in him too. For the fact that together we killed such a perfect love. He defended himself; he was strong, so he quickly got me in a lock on the ground. Except that I can't be tamed, you know that. I spat, scratched, even bit him.
He howled, and I was sure he'd wound me too. But suddenly he let me up, opened himself to my blows and whispered, Thank you, thank you, until I screamed furiously, for what? And he said: for still caring that much. At that I burst into tears. And then we made love till morning like in Hamburg."
Early the next morning the chauffeur woke her; he had brought a ring from the Sicilian. A large diamond was set in platinum between two emeralds the color of his eyes. She knew it cost more than all the money she had ever earned. For the few minutes she held it in her hand, she felt the way she had always longed to feel: the chosen one among women. Then she showed it to Martin and sent it back.
As if this last memory exhausted her more than her whole life story, she laid her forehead on her knees. Buback's tiredness, meanwhile, had completely fallen away.
"Why?"
"What do you mean, why?"
"Why did you return the ring? It's not as if you deceived him. On the contrary..."
And then he realized he was jealous of both the Italian and the actor.
"That's odd...." She shook her head.
"What's odd?"
"Martin asked the same thing. Typical that you'd ask as well."
"Why is it typical?"
She yawned, threw off her towel, and slipped under the quilt, without even a longing glance at the bathroom.
"Think about it, Buback. Or sleep on it; with you it amounts to the same thing. Good night, love."
The woman's newly widowed sister found the corpses. Despite their ghastly appearance, she kept her head; instead of fainting or raising an alarm, she relocked the apartment and went down to the police. Jan Morava, accompanied by all the free men in his group (and by Buback) was for once able to arrive on the scene of the crime first and secure the evidence. Soon Beran arrived, called by a pale Jitka out of his latest useless meeting with Police Commissioner Rajner, who was agonizing over how long to keep serving the occupying powers.
The three men on duty yesterday at the graveyard were there too. Sebesta remembered the murdered woman well; he had seen her hurry off through the side gate toward the embankment. He swore solemnly that no one had been following her, and Morava spotted a gaping hole in his net: the murderer would have taken Jana Kavanova for a widow by her clothing, even outside the cemetery.
Jana's sister cleared up the mystery of the dead youth. His flight from the trenches could no longer harm anyone.
The perpetrator had as usual chosen a time for his attack when men were away at work, children at school, and women at the stove. According to the witnesses, only the garbagemen, coalmen, a policeman, and a postman had come down the street since morning. These testified to seeing only a pair of housewives. Once again the unidentified killer had left no trace. He appeared and then vanished into thin air.
Morava had to summon all his strength to keep on track. Outwardly he seemed fine, but inside he was in utter despair. There was one person, however, who did notice. When the German finally left to inform his office, the superintendent clapped his adjutant on the shoulder.
"Take me along with you."
Morava was so crestfallen that he fell speechless. He waited, suffering, for Beran to say the inevitable words. Halfway across the bridge from Ujezd to Narodni Avenue, the superintendent turned to the driver.
"Stop here, Litera. We're going for a little walk."
Morava saw the driver cast a sympathetic glance his way. He followed the superintendent down the stairs to Stfelecky Island like a condemned man. At the bottom, Beran strode along the path for a while in silence, stopping finally at
an old oak. He ran two fingers along a slender twig sprouting from it that was dusted with miniature greenery.
"Nice progress since last time, don't you think?"
Of course, Beran did not expect an answer; he understood his companion's mind was elsewhere.
"You know what I'm going to say, don't you? I have to say it, though. Yes, I'm taking this case away from you."
Morava must have been the very picture of misfortune.
"Don't act like you've been betrayed and abandoned, Morava," Beran snapped irritably. "You did nothing you shouldn't have and everything you should have. Personally I can't find fault with you, because I'm no idiot. We're hunting a treacherous predator. For now he has the upper hand, but you've set a ring of hunters on his trail, and the noose will eventually tighten around him, as long as he keeps to his habits. At the moment yes, the murderer is fixated on widows and the Vysehrad cemetery. I wanted to tell you clearly, face-to-face, that you have no reason to criticize yourself. I'm taking over the case so that they won't ask for your head; Rajner is scared out of his wits and is looking for a sacrificial lamb."
