Widow Killer

by Pavel Kohout

  "We just need to ask a few questions," Lojza said.

  He pondered how to arrange it so he'd be alone with the caretaker for a while. A sudden sound and movement gave him his chance. The starter sounded and the Mercedes began to crawl back up toward the embankment. The bald man was first to understand.

  "He's giving us the slip!"

  Without waiting, he tore off, the stoker and the boy behind him. Now the caretaker would get his chance.

  "Take it off."

  The trapped man relaxed a bit as he untied the rag with trembling fingers. His eyes squinted as they got used to the light again. A few paces away the car's motor had shut off; Ladislov and Lojza were arguing with the driver.

  He asked the caretaker, "Do you know me?"

  What he saw sufficed. The man before him began to shake his head when suddenly his face twitched. He was not clever enough to mask it; he froze in recognition.

  Nothing to do, then, but ...

  "Pepik!" he shouted at the car.

  The boy ran over.

  "Here!" He gave him a submachine gun, safety off. "He confessed. He's yours."

  The excited Pepik almost dropped the Panzerfaust on the ground. For safety's sake he took it from the boy and set out toward the car stopped halfway up the slant of the embankment. Behind him he heard the caretaker's wheezing.

  "Let me go! I'm a witness, he's a murderer, the police are protec—"

  A long fusillade cut off the last syllable; the kid doesn't know what moderation is, he'll turn him into a sieve!

  But he did not turn around, just slowed down to let the boy catch up before he reached the petrified group at the Mercedes. Wordlessly he exchanged Pepik's weapon for his own.

  "Thanks, Mr. Ludvik," the boy said enthusiastically. "You can count on me!"

  In the two hours he spent in the police commissioner's office, Buback found the Czechs were having similar problems with the uprising: Things were not going smoothly, and skirmishes between local Resistance factions were hindering their struggle against the occupiers.

  The military situation in Prague and the rest of Bohemia had not changed significantly overnight, but Buback knew it was just the calm before the storm. Right now the Germans were determined to wait for the Americans, but sooner or later that would give way to their fear of the Russians. And once that giant mass of frontline soldiers and war machines moved, it would pour like molten lava over everything in its path. The only way to prevent it was for the Czechs to open the barricades and let the Germans retreat westward, except that the Czechs could not get a political consensus on this point.

  Forgotten in a corner of the antechamber as policemen, soldiers, and civilians ran in and out, Buback could overhear snatches of heated arguments and wondered whether Beran trusted him or was simply careless. Finally the new commissioner emerged and explained it himself.

  "I don't think there's anyone else in Prague with as good a chance as you, Mr. Buback. That's why I want you to have a clear picture of us. You didn't get any military secrets here today, just an impression you can take back to your superiors. I'm hoping they won't react the way they've done at the front or in other occupied countries. The fighters in Prague don't take orders from us or any other centralized authority. All we can do here is try to bring some order to what's already happened, or what's happening now without our knowledge. But if the Germans preempt the council's decision by attacking, that fractiousness and unpredictability will work against them, because then they'll be at the mercy of each and every barricade commander. I'd caution you strongly against risking it."

  Beran added that the Czech National Council was trying to contact the Kosice government by radio, but they were not expecting a response before evening; there was no sense wasting Buback's time. A new letter of transit with a minor Czechification of his identity would open a path through Czech Prague for him....

  He took it and read his Czech name.

  ErvIn Bubak.

  In the middle of the city the barricades were still up; the German guards were letting local residents past, and Buback got through with them on the way to and from Bredovska Street. He wrote the absent Meckerle a short but emphatic note and then set off for Grete with the lieutenant general's present. Ever since he got the pistol he had been berating himself for not thinking of it on his own. But how could he have known she was a crack shot?

  Meanwhile, May turned rapidly into a dank autumn; it began to rain again and the temperature continued to drop. Yesterday's enthusiasm had evaporated from the streets. The long wait had divided Praguers into two camps. For one group, the war had ended, and they grumbled that the rest kept playing soldiers and tearing up the streets; who would fix things afterwards, and when? The others were busy fortifying and strengthening the barricades.

  The dead-end street was devoid of life again; did anyone live here? This time he went straight to the door without stopping and confidently unlocked it; it seemed the least conspicuous entrance. He knocked their agreed signal inside on the wooden banister, but his heart leaped into his throat when Grete did not respond. He bounded up the stairs two at a time, all the while ruing leaving her alone in this murder-stained house.

  "Grete!"

  Silence. Would she too be lying on the floor just through the kitchen doors? He whirled in panic and might have injured himself on the steep steps if her muffled voice had not stopped him.

  "My love ...!"

  She crawled out from beneath the bed like a small animal from its lair.

  "If you didn't know I was here, you'd never find me, would you?"

  She must have seen the horror in his eyes.

  "Don't be angry at me, love." The words tumbled out of her. "I just wanted to be sure; strange, I've known for so long that this war was wrong and that Germany would lose it, but only now did I realize what that's going to mean for me—that charlatan Hitler seemed so strong that even I was fooled; I thought after his defeat the curtain would fall and we'd simply start a new number without him.... It never occurred to me that a time would come when Europe's hatred would turn against me, personally, that it would be I, Grete Baumann, who would foot the bill for the Germans who murdered; I should think it's only just, but I feel it isn't, my love ... and now, when I have you, I'd finally like us to have a couple of happy years together, until... Look what's happened to me!"

  He watched, distressed by her fear, as she quickly unbuttoned her long linen dress and pulled down her stocking. Baring a long, slender leg up to the hip, she pointed blindly with a finger, never letting her pitiful glance leave him.

  "Here ...!"

  "I don't know what you mean...."

  "Can't you see," she practically moaned at him.

  He brought his eye down to the place and finally spotted something: dark blue lacework delicately embroidered on a small square of lighter skin.

  "And what is it... ?"

  "My veins have burst!"

  He was so relieved he dismissed it with a wave.

  "If you hadn't shown it to me ..."

  "Buback! If the world weren't falling apart around us and you had time to observe my legs the way you used to, you'd have caught it yourself. That's how it all starts. Take it from a former dancer who's seen the crippled legs of colleagues cut from the troupe before forty, except I wasn't even twenty at the time and thought I was immortal."

  Now he understood: In her precarious solitude the theme of age had become a bulwark against the fear of death. Gratefully, he too switched gears.

  "Did you find anything else?"

  "Yes." She slid out of her dress, stripped off her white shorts, and turned her back to him. "Here!"

  He scoured her beautiful figure but could find no flaw in it, and told her so.

  "Come closer." She pulled him by the hand to the angled window. "Do you see those shadows?"

  Logically there had to be some.

  "Yes, so?"

  "You see, you do see them!" she tormented herself triumphantly. "They weren't there no
t long ago. My flesh is sagging."

  "What else?"

  "My chin. It was totally firm. And now..." She pinched the skin under her chin between her fingertips. "Watch me pull on it!"

  "You can stretch even the firmest skin that way."

  He demonstrated on his wrist.

  "We'll have to make love more often again," he said, "and you'll be even prettier all over, with your veins and wrinkles and everything else."

  "Where do you see wrinkles?" she snapped, wounded. "I don't have any wrinkles!"

  This spontaneous manifestation of female vanity made them both laugh.

  "Except there's a catch, love," she quickly turned serious. "I can't now, not much. Suddenly I can barely feel you. I can't relax. First we have to survive the war. That means getting out of here. And if we're separated, finding each other again."

  Now she was speaking from her heart.

  "Do you have an idea?"

  "Yes, I have a plan." She was animated again; the image of their meeting had banished thoughts of farewell. "The train station. The railways will be the first thing they repair. It's the easiest place to reach and the safest place to wait; there are always lots of people there."

  "But where?"

  "You choose."

  "Do you have any relatives?"

  "You'll be the only one, if you ever marry me."

  "Likewise."

  "All the easier to choose. Hamburg's too far, Berlin and Dresden blown to smithereens and nothing but sad memories. What's closer and not completely in ruins? Munich! Yes, love, we'll meet in Munich, what do you say? I'll be there a week after the war ends at latest, and won't move from the station until you appear."

  Naked from displaying her supposedly aging body to him, she shuddered from the cold. And once again sorrow broke through his love and tenderness, sorrow that even together they were so alone against the war, and that despite his efforts and her hopes this might be the last time they would see each other.

  "I'll do everything I can," he began carefully, "but I might be delayed longer than you think ..."

  "A month? Two ... ?"

  He would have to tell her.

  "Defeated soldiers will face imprisonment."

  "But you're not a soldier!"

  "All the worse for me that I am what I am. It could take a while before the Allies are satisfied that not everyone in the Gestapo building worked in the Gestapo."

  "How long, then?"

  He did not have the heart to say what he really thought.

  "Half a year, a year ..."

  Even that was enough to horrify her.

  "No!"

  "You know what?" He tried to reassure her by focusing again on their reunion. "If I don't return in four weeks, and you find work and an apartment somewhere else, look for me in Munich at the station the first Sunday each month at twelve, agreed?"

  "The first and third Sundays!" she announced.

  He nodded, but couldn't imagine in his wildest dreams that Grete, with her physical nature, could hold out alone for long, much as she might want to. He and Hilde had not needed to be close by. Even across the boundaries of distance and time their memories held them together. Grete's love demanded animal warmth; without it she would cease to exist. Her confession was foremost a warning not to leave her alone. But he loved her for this weakness as well.

  Once again he longed for her. So instead he stood up.

  "Agreed."

  "What is it, love?" She panicked. "Are you going already?"

  "I don't want to, but I have to…"

  She did not make it harder for him.

  "I know," she said, and he could hear the fear through her courage. "Just tell me you'll come again tonight. You will, won't you?"

  He did not believe he could manage it again today.

  "I'll try, but—"

  "Try, no buts! Keep the key."

  "Yes...."

  "Maybe you'll even take me with you."

  "Maybe ... oh! I have something for you."

  He pulled out the small pistol and was amazed to see how eagerly she reached for it, and how skillfully she checked that it was loaded.

  "It's perfect! Thanks."

  "I had no idea you were so attracted to guns."

  She stopped.

  "So why did you.... ?"

  He repeated Meckerle's words to her.

  She gave a husky laugh.

  "You see, I want to have my life in my own hands, love. I'm glad your male vanity didn't stop you from giving it to me. But you don't have to worry. I won't be afraid anymore; if anyone tries to hurt me, I can just as quickly and easily turn him into dust."

  The needle hunt in a haystack—there was no better term for it— went more successfully than Morava expected. The Czech police vehicle crossed the barricades without incident; at each point they tarried just long enough to find the person in command, usually a former officer, sometimes a colleague, and more and more often ordinary citizens determined to protect Prague even at the cost of their own lives. They would pass out two or three pictures with a caption, warn the recipients to be extremely cautious, and move on one block further.

  On a city map, Morava marked barriers and their apparent permeability. He and Litera worked outward from the radio building, combing nearby areas in the hope that the murder squad had found the city center congenial; later it occurred to Morava that they would probably have headed for the Czech-German flashpoints, where they could continue their hunt. The first batch of photographs was running out and the second would be ready that afternoon. As Litera drove, he groped along the shelf under the wheel in the hopes of finding a cigarette butt. A key skittered off the shelf and onto the floor; Morava picked it up.

  It belonged to Jitka; the last time she had used it was to open the door for her murderer, and it fell out of her skirt pocket on the way to the hospital. Litera had found it, put it away, and forgotten about it. Now Morava had this cold piece of metal in his palm, and the memory of their time together flooded back into his heart, when all he had to do was unlock the door to step out of the world of murderers (uniformed and otherwise) and into the small but boundless world of their love.

  How can it be, he despaired again, that she's gone and her killer is still alive?

  Then Morava caught Litera's sympathetic glance and turned to steel again. He would force himself through the door he had avoided ever since that day, and rid himself of that final weakness. His driver understood and agreed when Morava suggested they take Buback's thin German woman something fresh to eat; if the detective happened to be with her, they'd bring him back down with them. In the police canteen they gave Morava an enamel milk can filled with potato soup along with a quarter-loaf of bread. As usual they drove along the bank of the Vltava to the last tram stop, where they snaked up the hill on a narrow, wooded road. At the second bend some SS men unexpectedly stopped them.

  "Hande hoch!" an angular sergeant bellowed at them. "Hands up! Out of the car!"

  Their police uniforms had no effect this time; they were dragged rudely out of the vehicle, disarmed, and shoved onto the sidewalk: Morava tried to negotiate with them.

  "We work for the criminal police, which is cooperating with the Prague Gestapo on—"

  "Halt Maul! Shut up!"

  The petty officer ignored them; he was completely absorbed in directing his men. Small groups of SS were bashing their rifle butts against the doors of the low houses.

  The whole time he had lived in this corner of Prague with Jitka, Morava had rarely seen other people, only the occasional old ladies shuffling arduously out for a walk or to the store. Now for the first time all the inhabitants appeared on the street; it was a sorry sight, as if they were emptying out the old-age home and the poorhouse. An exception were the two youths they led out of the nearest house and put with the policemen. No one was paying attention to the foursome with raised hands at that moment; the SS troops were surveying their catch, driving the especially unsteady ones back into their houses.
>
  "Who are you?" Morava whispered.

  "Students. We ran from the Totaleinsatz, the work deployment. What do they want with us?"

  "I don't know."

  "We could run again," suggested the other, a vigorous blue-eyed blond with a handsome face. "They're not watching!"

  He set off, bounding with long strides down toward the curve in the road. The sergeant turned almost casually and pressed the trigger of his automatic rifle. They could see the shots slam into the student's body, which kept running for several more seconds before starting to fall; even on the ground its legs jerked in a left, right rhythm. The horrible movement stopped only when the SS man walked slowly over to the dying boy and mercifully gave him one more shot... mercifully! Morava trembled. What a mockery of the word....