The Cowards

by Josef Skvorecky

  THE COWARDS

  Josef Skvorecky is professor of English at Erindale College, University of Toronto. He emigrated to Canada after the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, and he and his wife, the novelist Zdena Salivarova, continue to keep Czech literature alive through their Czech-language publishing house, 68 Publishers. Skvorecky was the 1980 winner of the Neustadt International Prize for Literature and was nominated in 1982 for the Nobel Prize. His novel The Engineer of Human Souls won the Governor General’s Award for Fiction in 1984. In 1992 Josef Skvorecky was appointed to the Order of Canada.

  BY THE SAME AUTHOR

  Fiction

  Miss Silver’s Past

  The Bass Saxophone

  The Swell Season

  The Engineer of Human Souls

  Dvorak in Love

  The Mournful Demeanour of Lieutenant Boruvka

  Sins for Father Knox

  The End of Lieutenant Boruvka

  The Return of Lieutenant Boruvka

  The Miracle Game

  The Republic of Whores

  Non-fiction

  Jiří Menzel and the History of the Closely Watched Trains

  All the Bright Young Men and Women

  Talkin’ Moscow Blues

  Copyright © 1958, 1994 by Josef Skvorecky

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in Canada in 1995 by Vintage Books Canada, a division of Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. First published in Czechoslovakia in 1958 under the titles Zbabělci. First published in Great Britain in 1958 by Victor Gollancz Ltd. First published in Canada in 1980 by Penguin Books Canada Ltd. Distributed by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

  Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data

  Škvorecky, Josef, 1924–

  [Zbabělci. English]

  The cowards

  Translation of: Zbabělci

  eISBN: 978-0-307-36414-2

  I. Title. II. Title: Zbabělci. English.

  PS8537.K86Z213 1995 C891.8′63 C94–932115—X

  PR9199.3.S58Z213 1995

  v3.1

  To Zdena, the girl I met in Prague

  The British edition of this book is dedicated to all my friends to whom the old Latin saying, Donec ecris felix … does not apply.

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Author

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Author’s Preface

  Epigraph

  Friday, May 4, 1945

  Saturday, May 5, 1945

  Sunday, May 6, 1945

  Monday, May 7, 1945

  Tuesday, May 8, 1945

  Wednesday, May 9, 1945

  Thursday, May 10, 1945

  Friday, May 11, 1945

  Notes

  Author’s Preface

  I wrote The Cowards in 1948–9 when I was twenty-four years old. The events narrated in the book had been then only four years in the past, and I was still full of them. I remember that my main hope was to capture the magic reality of those turbulent days in May 1945, and in them, the boys and girls who were the friends of my youth. Who, therefore, remain my friends even today, half a century minus one year later.

  We thought then – or perhaps we wished then – that the Happy Days of Democracy Would Be Here Again. But we already sensed the taste of a very different future.

  After that future had set in, some courageous editors managed to bring out The Cowards. The book was banned one month after publication, I lost my job and became a persona non grata, at least not FULLY grata, until 1968, the annus mirabilis of the Prague Spring. The book, thanks to the draconian measures of the then Lords of the Realm, became a veritable cult novel, and marked, as one critic later said, ‘the beginning of the end of socialist realism in Czechoslovakia’.

  I still meet people, not only in my old country but even in Canada – young tellers at the Royal Bank, customs officers at the Toronto airport, housewives shopping at The Bay – who recognize my face, which can occasionally be seen on the TV, and tell me that they read The Cowards and felt it all happened to them when they were teenagers. Although that was in a different country and much later.

  I cherish these little marvels that, from time to time, happen to a writer, and I wish for no other reward.

  Josef Skvorecky

  Toronto, 6 March 1994

  ‘Any work of art that lives was created out of the very substance of its times. The artist did not build it himself. The work describes the sufferings, loves and dreams of his friends.’

  – ROMAIN ROLLAND

  ‘A writer’s job is to tell the truth.’

  – ERNEST HEMINGWAY

  ‘There was a revolution simmering in Chicago, led by a gang of pink-cheeked high school kids. These rebels in plus-fours, huddled on a bandstand instead of a soap-box, passed out riffs instead of handbills, but the effect was the same. Their jazz was a collectively improvised nosethumbing at all pillars of all communities, one big syncopated Bronx cheer for the righteous squares everywhere. Jazz was the only language they could find to preach their fire-eating message. These upstart small-fries … started hatching their plots way out in … a well-to-do suburb where all the days were Sabbaths, a sleepy-time neighborhood big as a yawn and just about as lively, loaded with shade-trees and clipped lawns and a groggy-eyed population that never came out of its coma except to turn over … They wanted to blast every highminded citizen clear out of his easy chair with their yarddog growls and gully-low howls.’

  MILTON ‘MEZZ’ MEZZROW

  Friday, May 4, 1945

  We were all sitting over at the Port Arthur and Benno said, ‘Well, it looks like the revolution’s been postponed for a while.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said and stuck the reed in my mouth. ‘For technical reasons, right?’ The bamboo reed tasted good, as it always did. One of the reasons I played tenor was because I liked to suck on the reed. But that’s not the only reason. When you play it makes such a nice buzzing noise. It reverberates inside your skull, good and solid and rounded and high class. It’s a great feeling, playing a tenor sax. Which is another reason why I played it.

  Benno took off his hat and hung it on the rack above Helena. He put his trumpet case on the table and took out his horn. ‘That’s it, for technical reasons,’ he said. ‘They don’t have enough guns or enough guts and there’re still too many Germans around.’

  ‘Anyway, it’s crazy,’ said Fonda. ‘We should all be glad things are going as well as they have so far.’

  ‘Except they’re not going all that well,’ said Benno.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Benno raised his eyebrows, stuck the mouthpiece into his trumpet, and pressed it against those thick Habsburg lips of his. Fonda watched him, his mouth half open, and waited. Benno blew into the trumpet and pressed the valves. He raised his eyebrows even higher and didn’t say a word. He wanted to keep Fonda in suspense. Fonda was always getting worked up over something. It didn’t take much to get a rise out of Fonda.

  ‘What do you mean?’ he kept on. ‘Has there been any trouble?’

  Benno blew a long note and it sounded hard and very sure, so I stopped worrying about him losing his tone while he was in the concentration camp. He hadn’t. He definitely hadn’t lost it. Just from that one note you could tell he hadn’t.

  ‘There was a fight over in Chodov yesterday,’ he said, and unscrewed one of the valves.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘Somebody got tight and hung out the Czech flag and then people tried to make the Germans give up their guns.’ Benno spat on the valve and stuck it back in.

  ‘And what happened?’ Fonda persisted.

&nb
sp; ‘The Germans didn’t cooperate.’

  ‘Anybody get hurt?’ asked Haryk.

  ‘Yes,’ said Benno laconically.

  ‘How many?’

  ‘About four.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Pop was there this morning with Sabata.’

  ‘And what’s going on over there now?’

  ‘Everything’s quiet. Everybody’s cooled off.’

  ‘Are the Germans still there?’

  ‘They are.’

  ‘Hell,’ said Haryk. ‘What did you mean anyway when you said what you did before?’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘About the revolution being postponed.’

  ‘Well, old man Weiss wanted to stage an uprising today. He had it all arranged with people in Chodov and Rohnice but when the trouble started up in Chodov ahead of schedule, they decided to forget it.’

  ‘How do you know, for Chrissake?’ said Fonda.

  ‘Also from Pop. Pop’s on some kind of national committee or something.’

  ‘Don’t believe him,’ said Helena. ‘He’s just trying to get you all worked up. Now sit down like a good boy and play, Benny!’

  Benno picked up his trumpet and went over to sit down. Old Winter shuffled in from the taproom and set a glass of pink soda pop down in front of Helena.

  ‘Hey,’ said Lucie, ‘don’t you have any lime soda?’

  ‘I’ll be right with you,’ said Winter, and slowly shuffled back to the tap. He had three rolls of fat at the back of his neck and his seat sagged. He reminded me of an elephant – I don’t know whether it was male or female – I saw in a circus once. It kept tramping around the ring, its behind hanging down, limp and deflated, just like old Winter’s. Josef Winter said his old man had progressive paralysis, but then he was mad at him because his old man wouldn’t give him any money and only grumbled about Josef’s loafing around all the time and never doing anything. Even if he did have progressive paralysis, I don’t know whether that would have any connection with his pants. Anyway, it was only an idea. Kind of a dumb idea, the kind a person has subconsciously. Because inside, people are dirty dogs. Everybody. The only difference is some people try to hide it and others don’t bother. The door opened and Jindra Kotyk came into the Port.

  ‘Hello,’ he said, and started off to pick up his bass fiddle which he kept in the Winters’ bedroom.

  ‘About time,’ said Fonda.

  ‘I couldn’t get here any sooner. Boy, did all hell ever break loose at our place today!’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘At the factory.’

  ‘Huh?’ said Haryk.

  ‘At Messerschmidt. At the factory.’

  ‘You mean you went to work today?’ said Haryk.

  ‘Well, what’s wrong with …’

  ‘Man, you’re dumb,’ said Fonda.

  ‘What’d you want me to do?’

  ‘Well, certainly not make a fool of yourself,’ said Haryk. ‘What’s the point in showing up for work at the factory any more?’

  Mrs Winter appeared in the kitchen door with the bass fiddle. This saved Jindra just when he’d worked himself into a pretty tight spot.

  ‘Thanks,’ he said and ducked behind his fiddle. He pretended he was tuning up but that wasn’t very shrewd of him since everybody knew he wasn’t. He couldn’t. He didn’t know how. The fact was he was just a sort of stopgap since we hadn’t been able to find another bass player. To be more exact, we hadn’t even been able to round up a bass, so when Jindra bought one we were glad to at least have somebody propping up a bass behind us when we appeared in public. The only trouble was we had to let him play it, too. Otherwise he wouldn’t let us use his fiddle at all. So we chalked some marks up under the wires so the sounds he did make wouldn’t be too far off and in time he actually learned to plunk away pretty well. He even had a red-hot solo in one number. All that saved it from being a complete fiasco was the terrific energy he brought to his playing. All you could hear were those wires, which he plucked like mad, snapping away against the neck; applause usually covered up the sour notes. Jindra was very proud of his solo and called his technique the ‘Jan Hammer style’ – after the Czech swing-bassist – and we let him call it whatever he wanted to. It would have been stupid to cross him up, since his old man owned a dry-goods store and had some pull with City Hall and the Germans, which came in handy when we were trying to get an engagement.

  ‘Oh God!’ said Haryk. ‘Hitler’s dead and he still goes off to work.’

  ‘Well, it just so happens things at the factory have been very interesting these past few days.’

  ‘Interesting? I beg your pardon?’

  Jindra took advantage of the opening. Now he could talk away and cover up the bad impression he’d made. I looked at him and saw him tightening up the key on the bass, pretending to be listening for the pitch but meanwhile saying casually, ‘There was a riot at Messerschmidt. The workers stopped work and asked for a raise.’

  ‘Oh God!’ said Haryk again. ‘Hitler’s dead, the Reich’s going up in smoke, and all the Messerschmidt workers think about is trying to get a raise.’

  ‘They were just trying to raise hell. But the biggest joke is that it was Bartosik who led the whole strike.’

  ‘Who’s that?’

  ‘You don’t know him? Herr Bartosik from the pay office.’

  ‘Oh, him. You mean those idiots let themselves be led by a collaborator like him?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Jindra, and that was all. He stopped tuning his bass and flipped open the sheet music in front of him. We were all watching him. From the way he’d said it you could tell there was more to it than that. He waited a little while till the room got quiet, and when it was he went on.

  ‘They let him lead ’em. But only up to Fenik’s office, and then they grabbed both of ’em and locked ’em up in the basement.’

  ‘Jesus!’ said Haryk. ‘I’m beginning to develop a healthy respect for the working class.’

  ‘You should have seen it! Especially the look on Bartosik’s face when they locked him up. You can’t imagine …’

  ‘Oh yes I can. Because I was around when he made a bad mistake like that once before,’ said Benno.

  ‘When?’

  ‘When he found out I was going to be shipped off to a concentration camp for racial reasons.’

  We laughed, and Jindra laughed loudest. He had good reason to. He could be glad to get let off as easy as he had been after acting like such an eager beaver. Imagine, working in a German aircraft plant in Kostelec on the Fourth of May, 1945. Benno started off on a Bob Cats solo, softly, just for himself, and we turned to our parts, too. Before they shipped him off to the camp, Benno had been Bartosik’s secretary. I can just imagine how surprised Mr Bartosik must have been when he found out he’d had a half-Jew working for him in such a responsible position. And when he remembered all those half days he’d let Benno goof off! I stuck my saxophone in my mouth and hummed into it the opening bars of the first chorus of ‘Annie Laurie’. At the next desk Haryk opened up ‘Annie Laurie’ too, except on his score he’d written ‘Lucie’. ‘Annie Lucie.’ Old Winter pried himself loose from the tap and brought over some green soda pop on a tray. He shuffled over to the table by the window and set it down in front of Lucie. Lucie took a straw, tore off the wrapper, and dipped the straw into the soda pop. Then she bent over the glass and started to sip. She sat there in her nice thin dress, with her golden hair, sipping the emerald-coloured soda pop through which shone the setting sun. She was awfully pretty. I thought about Irena and wondered what she was doing. But I knew. I was pretty sure I knew what she was doing. Zdenek hadn’t been going to the factory for a long time so it was pretty clear what he was up to also. Benno sounded off behind me, playing his rough, big, beautiful pre-concentration camp solo from ‘St James Infirmary’. I looked out the window and there hung the dusky silhouette of the castle and the sky was all red and orange with little clouds and clear patches and the first tiny stars. Lights g
limmered in the castle windows. The big shots were probably putting their heads together. About how to make themselves scarce, most likely. The place was crawling with them. They’d come here from all over the Reich and now things were closing in on them from all sides and there they sat in their plush-upholstered rooms like in a trap. There was something kind of poignant about it. Kostelec was right in the middle of Europe, so they’d all gathered here. I guess they thought they could still save their skins somehow or other. One of that bunch was a queen of Württemberg – Ema, the housekeeper’s daughter up at the castle, had pointed her out to me – and she was very good looking. I wasn’t interested in her though. Falling in love with her would have been like falling in love with Deanna Durbin or something. The only way I could ever get her would be to take her by force when everything fell apart. But the thought of taking somebody by force when everything fell apart didn’t appeal to me. As a matter of fact, I’ve never felt like taking anybody by force ever. The only thing was that this Queen of Württemberg was pretty and I’ve always had a soft spot for a pretty woman. I didn’t have much faith in spiritual beauty. It’s all right for people to have a soft spot for pretty girls, because that’s only natural and it would be crazy to deny it. That’s just our nature. Anyway I was convinced that Fonda Cemelik had a crush on the Queen of Württemberg, too, even though he said he didn’t and that he couldn’t care less about her, because she really was awfully good looking. Prettier than Irena – I had to admit it objectively. Except that I was in love with Irena, and Fonda had all sorts of prejudices and moral scruples. Something anyway. And all I felt for the Württemberg queen was sympathy. Nothing else.

  Fonda rapped on the piano lid. ‘Okay, let’s tune up,’ he said. He gave us A and we tuned up. Meanwhile I went on thinking about the Queen of Wurttemberg. Fonda didn’t waste any time on Jindra but he was very strict with the rest of us. He had absolute pitch and sometimes really made a show of it. Venca was sweating from the way Fonda kept nagging at him. He made Venca slide his trombone all the way out but still it didn’t sound right. When I finally told him the horn couldn’t possibly still be off pitch, Fonda insisted there must have been a slip-up somewhere when the thing was made, or that the heat must have done things to it, but that nobody could question the fact that he had a perfect sense of pitch. Anyway, we were all on pitch at last and then quieted down. Fonda rapped four times on the top of Winter’s upright piano and we began to play. Lexa wailed shrilly in the highest register of his clarinet, Venca sank down to the explosive depths of his trombone to build up the bass, and I was playing around with some fancy little flourishes in the middle range, while Benno came out above us with his rough, dirty, sobbing tones that sounded like they came from heaven. I started thinking about the Queen of Württemberg again, and about how good it was that there were beautiful girls in this world. It seemed only right there should be. I thought that here was this queen with a fancy family tree and ancestors and all kinds of class prejudices, but no kingdom to rule over, and that she could never, for instance, think of marrying me even if I wanted to marry her, but then it struck me maybe she would, now, because I was a Czech and she was a German and maybe my look-out was a lot better than hers even if I didn’t have any ancestors or prejudices like hers, but then I realized yes I did have ancestors, in fact just as many as she had, and I remembered those monogenetic and polygenetic theories I’d been reading about a while before and I remembered Forester Bauman who’d somehow found out that our family is actually an offshoot of the Smirickys of Smirice and if he was right, I thought, then I could marry the Württemberg queen after all, except suddenly I thought maybe an English lady might be a whole lot better when the war was over and with me coming from such a distinguished family, and while I was thinking all these things over we went right on playing without a break. The idea that there might be a revolution or that we would see front line action didn’t even occur to me. And when it was time for me to start off on my solo, I thought to myself, you fool, Irena’s the only woman you’ve got and the only one you love and she’s better than all the others and more important than anything else in the whole world, and I started thinking about dying a hero’s death and how that would really impress Irena and how wonderful it must be to die a hero’s death, except that she would have to get to know about all the details and I was positive then that I was in love with Irena because it was so wonderful to feel so positive that I was.