The Cowards

by Josef Skvorecky

  ‘We crossed the iron bridge over to the island, a classic moon looking in through the trusses, the water below rushing over the weir, and the willows on the island rustling and whispering.

  ‘ “Trudy,” I said when we were on the path with the black shadows changing to moonlight and then back to shadows again, “Ich liebe Sie” and I took hold of her arm. At first she didn’t say anything so I went on, telling her in my broken German that I didn’t know quite how to explain it but that as soon as I’d seen her I felt suddenly … and all that junk you usually say in situations like that. Then we went over to a bench under a big weeping willow and the bench was almost hidden under the leaves and things were looking very promising. Trudy said we should sit down and so we sat down and I held Trudy’s hand and then she started to talk.

  ‘ “Es ist schön, was Sie mir sagen,” she said, “and I believe you, but you must understand that it can’t go on like this.”

  ‘ “Why?” I said.

  ‘ “Because – well, for the reasons you mentioned yourself.”

  ‘ “But those aren’t really reasons.”

  ‘ “So you say,” she said mysteriously and fell silent.

  ‘ “Trudy,” I said, “do you really believe all that stuff?”

  ‘ “Ja,” she said.

  ‘ “But it’s all nonsense,” I said bravely. Only it wasn’t bravery so much as the fact that I felt I could really trust this girl, even though she was obviously one of those hundred-percent Nazis. Even if she actually did believe all that nonsense, I was sure she wouldn’t let it come between us. “It’s all crazy, can’t you see that?” I said.

  ‘ “So you say,” Trudy said. “And that’s what the Czechs think, and the Jews, too, because it’s not very pleasant for them.”

  ‘ “But we don’t even take it seriously!”

  ‘ “No,” she said, smiling slightly and shaking her head, “and I can understand why. It can’t be very nice to know you belong to an inferior race.”

  ‘I must be dreaming, I thought. I couldn’t believe my ears. And suddenly I had this weird feeling, she’s actually sitting next to me and then, even weirder, I could feel how she must be feeling, sitting there next to somebody who belonged to an inferior race, and I thought, what does it feel like anyway – as if you’re sitting next to a chimpanzee? And I couldn’t believe it. And before I knew it, I asked her straight out.

  ‘ “Sagen Sie mir,” I said, “how do I … what do you see me as anyway?”

  ‘ “How do you mean?” she asked innocently, and again I simply couldn’t believe she’d been serious before. It seemed to me she must have been just pulling my leg.

  ‘ “Well, I mean from a racial point of view.”

  ‘ “Ach so! Well, you’re Czech, aren’t you?”

  ‘ “Yes.”

  ‘ “Well then, that’s how I see you – as a Czech.”

  ‘ “Fine, but then don’t you have … I mean, don’t I disgust you or something?”

  ‘ “You aren’t a Jew, are you?”

  ‘ “No.”

  ‘ “Na also. Then you’re an Aryan, and the only difference is that your racial mixture is an inferior kind.” She said this so innocently and in such a scholarly tone that it really floored me.

  ‘ “Racial mixture?” I asked, stunned, and she started unreeling a whole slew of lunatic theories – theories that really sounded crazy when you heard them the first time, about the German race being some kind of mixture of Nordic and I don’t know what all races and how everybody in Europe originally came from this race and how they all had blonde hair and blue eyes and she did too. Well, if that whole Nordic-German race looked as good as she did, it followed, I guess, that it really was a pretty noble race. The only trouble was that once she got started she couldn’t stop talking all the nonsense about first-class Ayrans and second-class Ayrans and mixed races and hopelessly mixed-up races like the Jews, for instance, and I listened and I was shocked and I still couldn’t believe she really meant it. Finally I stopped listening. I just couldn’t figure out how she could go on sitting there next to me explaining all these theories if I was as awful as she made out I must be, or how she could find me anything but awful if she knew I was, racially, such an inferior blend. And then I figured this whole race theory must be something like that coffee they used to self at Meinl’s before the war, where the best and most expensive kind was blended out of about twenty different kinds of coffee and then there were cheaper blends made out of fewer kinds until you got all the way down to the ordinary Brazilian kind that didn’t even say what it was blended out of, so it probably wasn’t blended at all. But I didn’t tell her that and when she stopped talking for a minute, I asked her what she would do if I was a Jew?

  ‘ “I wouldn’t be sitting here.”

  ‘ “Why not?”

  ‘ “I couldn’t sit with a Jew.”

  ‘ “But why? You mean it would upset you physically or what?”

  ‘ “Yes. Of course it would.”

  ‘Then I thought I’d give her a hard time and make her ditch that racial junk once and for all.

  ‘ “Look,” I said in a fatherly tone. “You’re about eighteen, right?”

  ‘ “Going on eighteen.”

  ‘ “That means that ten years ago you weren’t even eight.”

  ‘ “That’s right.”

  ‘ “Then tell me – how many Jews have you seen anyway since you were eight years old?” I said as if that took care of that argument. She frowned again. I could tell I had her there.

  ‘ “That has nothing to do with it,” she said.

  ‘ “It certainly does. How can you judge about something you don’t know from your own experience?”

  ‘ “Schauen Sie,” she said again, using one of her favourite expressions, “you don’t know from your own experience that the earth rotates around the sun and yet you believe that, don’t you?”

  ‘That little Jesuit trick caught me off guard. All I could come up with right then was, “All right. But that has been scientifically proven.”

  ‘ “Well,” she said, “so has this.”

  ‘ “I beg your pardon?”

  ‘ “Have you read Rosenberg? Or Gobineau? Or Chamberlain? Or at least something by Streicher?”

  ‘ “Well, no, but …”

  ‘ “There, you see? And you talk about scientific proof. Well, these things have been proved just as scientifically as gravity and all those other things.”

  ‘This wasn’t the way I’d wanted things to go – getting all tangled up like this. But, believe me, arguing with her wasn’t easy. You couldn’t allow yourself to forget, even for a second, that you were arguing with a fanatical Nazi. And I still couldn’t quite believe she was. “You’re right,” I said.

  ‘ “Na, sehen Sie!”

  ‘ “Yes, you may be right. Still I don’t think it would hurt you any to try some of your ideas out in practice and see how they hold up then.”

  ‘ “There’s no need for that.”

  ‘ “But you could at least give it a try.”

  ‘ “There’s no need for that and I don’t even think it’s possible today.”

  ‘ “Why not?”

  ‘ “Why, all the Jews have already been isolated.”

  ‘That really made me mad. It was the casual way she said it that really made me mad. And all at once it struck me how awful and absurd it was – her sitting there talking about it so casually and at the same time looking so pretty and sweet, and yet what was coming out of her mouth was something a beast like Streicher would say. And she didn’t even notice. It didn’t even faze her. Just then the moon came out and drifted slowly over the branches of the willow we were sitting under. Trudy looked beautiful and her face was still flushed with the excitement of explaining her theories to me, but suddenly she seemed revolting – or not so much that as she horrified me somehow – seemed abnormal, a kind of monster with that pretty little face and all those horrible ideas inside. I got terribly angry, fur
ious at her. Suddenly I got an idea and I didn’t even stop to think what might happen but barged right ahead, wanting to hurt her, to mess up and knock apart that tidy little stiff neat world of hers with all its orderly varieties of racial mixtures like Meinl’s blended coffees. Maybe it was stupid of me, maybe it wasn’t, but I couldn’t help it, I had to do it and I did. As that sentimental silvery moon drifted by and she said with godlike calm that all the Jews were isolated, as if they were lepers or something, and when I started thinking about what “isolation” really meant, and when it dawned on me that while I was sitting there calmly kidding around with a pretty Brunhilde, boys I knew – Quido Hirsch and Alik Karpeles and Pavel Polak – maybe weren’t even alive any more or were going through God knows what kind of hell right then – then I couldn’t hold it in any more and I blurted it out, and it was a real pleasure to feel that venom flow.

  ‘ “It might still be possible, though – even today,” I said.

  ‘ “How do you mean?”

  ‘ “Well, I mean there’re still some Mischlinge left.”

  ‘ “Na ja. Aber …”

  ‘ “I’m one,” I said satanically and squeezed her hand and tried to put my arm around her waist; deep down I still couldn’t believe it would make any difference to her, but I had a kind of devilish wish it would. And it did, too. I could feel her whole body go stiff. She stared at me, her eyes nearly popping out of her head.

  ‘ “Was?” she gasped, and then for a second we both just sat there, motionless. I slid my right hand around her slim waist.

  ‘ “I am a half-Jew – ein Halbjude,” I said in that same satanic voice and then she shuddered. She really shuddered, as if she’d touched a toad, and then jerked away from me so violently that I was really surprised. A crazy thought about conditioned and basically unnatural reflexes flashed through my head and she jumped up and I just sat there and her lovely hair looked bleached in the moonlight. She stood there in front of me, her empty hands still pushing out in front of her, and she was staring at me and saying, in a voice full of dread as if she couldn’t believe her ears, “Sie sind …”

  ‘ “Ein Halbjude,” I repeated in a murderously calm tone of voice. She just groaned in a funny unnatural way, turned and ran away. All I saw was that Nordic head of hers shining from time to time as she ran out of the shadows into the moonlight. I sat there on the bench and didn’t feel like ever getting up again. A real beauty, the picture of happiness and everything that makes life worth living – and that’s what they’d done to her.’

  His story over, Lexa lit another cigarette. I looked at my watch. It was 11.30.

  ‘And you never saw her again?’ asked Haryk.

  ‘No.’

  Haryk was silent for a minute and then he said, ‘Well, you never can tell. Maybe she was just a bitch to begin with.’

  ‘Maybe she wasn’t,’ said Lexa.

  Nobody said anything. Then Lexa sneezed.

  ‘Christ, the way I feel now, I’ll never live to see morning.’

  I looked over at Benno stretched out on the mattress and saw he was sound asleep with his mouth wide open. Then I looked around the room. The air was thick with smoke. A few guys were still playing cards; others were flopped out on mattresses, sleeping; others who’d fallen asleep at their tables were still pillowing their heads on their arms, sleeping. I watched a kid across from me fighting to keep awake. His eyelids kept drooping lower and lower over his eyes and his face began to look stupid, and then all of a sudden his head would sag down on his chest and he’d jerk it up again and you could see what an effort it was. Then for a minute he’d sort of pull himself together and then his eyelids began to droop again and his face slowly grew stupid again, and he’d go through the whole thing again, exactly the same each time. Lexa sat there leaning his head back against the wall, blowing out smoke rings and thinking. Haryk sat there, his knees drawn up under his chin, and was silent, too. So there we sat and this was the revolution. You could hear the snap of cards from the corner and Benno snoring loudly from the mattress. I wanted to fall asleep, too. That’s all I wanted to do – just sleep. I was tired and fed up with everything. I could feel my head starting to droop and each time it slumped over onto my chest I felt it and knew how stupid my own face probably looked but didn’t care because everybody looks dumb when they’re sleeping and it seemed to me that there wasn’t anything either clever or decent in the whole wide world, that everything was a sham, a big bluff, and all I felt was this awful weariness and that chin of mine that kept dropping down and down and that kept getting harder and harder to lift up again.

  It was Dr Bohadlo who woke me up. He looked as sickeningly fresh and pink as ever and was wearing a plaid scarf around his neck. He tapped me on the shoulder and when I turned and looked up, he grinned.

  ‘Time to get up!’ he said. ‘We’re on duty again.’ I was convinced I’d never make it, never be able to get up. It was the same feeling I’d had lots of times when we were on forced labour and when I felt so lousy at five in the morning I thought I’d never be able to get up, that I’d stay in bed and talk my way out of it somehow, that I’d play sick and stay home, while all the time I knew that I couldn’t, that I already had two absences that month and that I’d have to go to the factory and rivet all day in the freezing cold. I just did not want to believe I’d really get up. I did though. Haryk was up and ready to go and Lexa had already gone. They’d probably come for him while I was asleep. Dr Bohadlo took Benno by the shoulder and shook him. But Benno just grumbled something. Dr Bohadlo shook him again. Benno opened his eyes, and when he saw Dr Bohadlo he sat up.

  ‘Time to get up! We’re on duty again!’ Dr Bohadlo sang out like a Scoutmaster. He behaved like one of those hikers or mushroom collectors that get such a kick out of getting up early though they could sleep till noon if they wanted to. I never got any kick out of that kind of thing. Neither did Benno, from the way he looked.

  ‘Come on now, boys. Hurry up!’ said Dr Bohadlo and moved towards the door.

  Benno got up, rubbed his eyes, then shuffled after the doctor. Fat and sleepy, he stumbled between the sleeping figures to the door and said, ‘Shit.’

  We went out into the hall and buttoned our coats. A cold draught came in from outside. It was dark in the hall. I heard Dr Bohadlo saying that our route had been changed for the night, that we’d be patrolling around the railroad station. Then I could hear him opening a door but still couldn’t see any light. It was pitch dark outside. A cold wind swept into the hallway. Benno was swearing under his breath. We staggered out and the wind hit us hard.

  Dr Bohadlo switched on his flashlight. ‘Careful now, boys. Wouldn’t want anyone to get lost,’ he said. We lined up. My whole body was trembling from the cold. I could practically feel myself catching the flu. We lurched across the yard. A lantern was shining at the corner of the administration building and in its light you could see little raindrops being blown around the corner of the building. The fine rain chilled my face. We headed towards the gate over which another lit lantern hung. Under it stood two soldiers with fixed bayonets and turned-up coat collars.

  ‘All in step now,’ said Dr Bohadlo when we got out to the paved part. Benno grunted something. We fell in step with the other boys and clattered across the cobblestones towards the gate. The drizzle shone as it slanted across the lantern in the gateway. We passed the two soldiers who paid no attention to us – just stamped their feet and clumped back and forth – and then marched off into the deep and windy darkness between us and the town. All I could see were a few little blue blacked-out street lights – points of light that dimly showed the way to the station. We went more by memory than sight and it wasn’t much fun in that dark. I felt the bridge under my feet and, under the bridge, the river, but couldn’t see a thing. The wind and rain didn’t let up for a minute. We got to the tracks and went past a red signal. The station was dark. Suddenly there was a bright wedge of light, a door opened, a guy carrying a gun slipped out, and then the door c
losed. There stood the German munitions train. We crossed the tracks. Dr Bohadlo halted.

  ‘Hold it up, boys,’ he said.

  We halted.

  ‘Now then,’ said the doctor, ‘from this point on we’re going to spread out, forming a column from one side of the street to the other. A human chain. That way, nobody can get by us.’

  ‘I thought we were only going to patrol around the station,’ said Benno.

  ‘Well, and so we will, too, Down Jirasek Boulevard to Novotny’s, then past the station and over to Schroll’s and back again.’

  ‘Aha,’ said Benno.

  Dr Bohadlo switched his flashlight on again. The cone of light lit up a patch of the Messerschmidt factory wall.

  ‘Let’s go,’ said Dr Bohadlo. We spread out across the width of the street and started off. We gradually all got into step again. Spread out like that we made a lot more noise than when we marched in a column. It was dark except for a thin band of feeble light where the rain clouds had torn, low on the horizon. From the distance you could hear the faint chatter of machine guns.

  ‘Hear that?’ said one of the other boys. We listened. The machine gun chattered in short bursts, and another machine gun chattered back.

  ‘That’s from the front,’ the boy said. ‘It’s pretty close already. Somewhere around Ledecsky Rocks.’

  As we went on, I thought of Ledecsky Rocks and of the Eagle’s Nest where we’d been sitting a week ago, all worn out from the climb up through the cone-shaped Chimney, me and Zdenek and Irena and Vasek, and listening to all that wonderful news blowing in from Germany. You could hear everything from up there. Machine guns and Tiger and Panther cannons and those Soviet T-34’s, and the sky above us was blue and beautiful and under that sky, just beyond the horizon, there was a war going on. It was great, sitting up there with the war almost over and I’d almost regretted that it was all going to end, those afternoons when they drove us out of the factory into the spring fields and then, far off on the horizon, white ribbons of smoke appeared and then those shiny American planes – things like that, everything. And naturally I was sad, too, on account of Irena and Zdenek who were sitting there side by side, and Zdenek fastened his safety rope to Irena so they were tied together and, like a fool, I saw that as a symbol and thought maybe I could just accidentally help him tumble over the side of some cliff but naturally thinking about it was as far as I got. I didn’t do a damn thing. As usual.