It was as if the music were dictating thoughts to Grete, and her motions turned them into words of sorrow and hope.
As he watched her, captivated, his sorrow and revulsion dissolved. Two unbelievable gifts of fate shone brightly above the filth and blood of the miserable world.
He was alive.
And he had her.
She stopped and knelt down at his side.
“And why were you so horribly afraid when you thought it was me?”
“Suddenly I realized I loved you….”
“Oh, Buback! Now you really are perfect!”
MAY
The little guy protected and threatened him at the same time. On the train, his bold openness had brought them together, but even at home he would not shut up. He was sure to tell his foreman at the locomotive depot in Beroun that he was hiding a parachutist. If he didn’t spill it to the other railwaymen himself, his boss would see to that. By evening some informer would know, and that night they’d seize him.
From the frying pan into the fire. MURDERER OR SPY? THE BLADE OR THE BULLET?
The warmed-over potato stew tasted of bad beer, but at least it filled his empty stomach; he chewed and listened to the tripe that his host served up.
“Give this to your signaler,” the runt was whispering urgently. “No, don’t tell me where he is, well all get together for a drink once it’s over, but the train schedules for the Protectorate could help the Allies considerably, couldn’t they?”
He realized swearing this man to silence would be useless. The runt would promise, but wouldn’t obey. This was a man who longed to live an interesting life, and finally his dream had come true — except it would be wasted without spectators.
Even so, he felt calmer already. The situation still wasn’t rosy, but he had averted the catastrophe facing him in Plze
. And now he had time to think what came next, before the half-pint set off for work.
FIRST I HAVE TO GET TO KNOW HIM.
In case I need to stay a while: Inquire how he lives, what his habits are, his acquaintances, friends, who visits him, why and when.
His host’s temperament made it easy. Despite the late hour the guy kept talking, questions or no. He longed desperately to engrave himself on the memory and heart of his unexpected guest, who had accepted him into the Resistance.
The story matched the storyteller. It was primitive. In an hour he was sure.
I KNOW EVERYTHING ABOUT HIM.
Karel Malina lived alone but carried on with his married neighbor, who — he winked knowingly — cleaned for him and fed him for free. Her husband was also a railway engineer who slept every other night in a different city, leaving Malina to warm his bed. Everything was taken care of; Malina was snug as a bug in a rug.
SO, THE WOMAN NEXT DOOR!
He knew, he told the runt, that for his own safety, Malina would need to watch his tongue. However, if Malina was going to hide him till the coup, he would have to mention the arrangement to his neighbor.
The guy shone with bliss.
Of course Malina couldn’t introduce them — parachutists need to keep a low profile — but he should tell her what was going on. That way she wouldn’t worry if she didn’t see her neighbor around for a few days, because… yes! He’d make Malina his contact with his signaler.
Now the guy nearly squealed with bliss.
Once Malina told her in the morning, he should come back to report how she took it, and then as usual set off for work. By the time he returned home, the first report, based on the information he’d given, would be ready. That evening they’d flesh it out and the next day Malina would fake illness to arrange its dispatch. From there they’d have to see.
The half-pint was in seventh heaven. He gave his guest his own bed and went to sleep in the bathroom, where he fit comfortably in the tub.
When he was alone in bed at last, in the quiet and the dark at the end of that crazy day, a single image occupied his mind: The slab of ice moving out of the cellar. What would happen when the hearts melted?
WILL THE DOVE-SOULS FLY OUT?
Nonsense, logic told him in those final moments; he’d killed them dead, time to forget about them…. Now he felt with every fiber of his being that another task was calling him…. But what was it?
He plunged into sleep like water.
Finally, at the tail end of the night after the day the world got rid of Hitler, Grete fell asleep, or more accurately fainted from exhaustion. Buback remained lying beside her, his senses aglow but his mind strangely clear, knowing that for the first time he was feeling the responsibility of love.
In his first life he and Hilde had been young and Germany had been different. Back then, values that had grown and matured since their bloody birth in the French Revolution still ruled. Hilde had imparted them to Heidi and Buback had guarded the laws that kept them safe. The generation that grew up during the Great War, and then Germany’s civil war, was firmly convinced that a battered and wise mankind would never put itself through hell like that again.
Even the prosperity following the Führer’s rise seemed to confirm this. New job creation schemes had instantly wiped out unemployment and given the Reich — among other things — the world’s most modern highway system, proof for many that an authoritarian government sometimes helps a nation more than parliaments full of idle, chattering humanists.
When Hitler built a massive army to defend the German miracle from an envious outside world, he placed love for homeland above love for individuals. Even Buback, who tried to be an instrument of useful ideas, could not control his family’s life. Its destiny was determined by the war, which played with his loves like a cat plays with mice, luring them into the idyllic land of vineyards to smite them with its paw.
Those endless seconds yesterday afternoon, when he thought the murderer had killed Grete, shook Buback’s emotions down to the very core of his being. Until that moment Grete was just what she had said: a wartime lover, linked to him by loneliness and a sudden flame of passion meant to cremate the dead in both of them. The threat of losing her opened a new dimension inside him. An icy emptiness surrounded him, as if he’d stepped across death’s threshold while he was still alive. And when he found the other woman was the victim, he felt an almost inhumanly cruel relief.
He had instantly regained control, trying to support the young Czech with his burden. Still, Buback was still deeply grateful that this time fate had passed over him. If Jitka Modrá had given him the hope that even after Hilde he might love again, Grete Baumann had fulfilled it.
He now knew that he was not here to participate in this dirty and hopeless war any longer, but rather to protect his love and lead her to safety. But how…?
The man who woke at five A.M. at the bedside of a dead Jitka Modrá was a completely different Jan Morava than the one who fell asleep beside her while she was still alive.
His nighttime despair and his contention with God were gone. He helped the nurses wash her and dress her in a clean white shirt, accompanied her on the stretcher to the pathology lab, kissed her on her still-warm lips, and then waited for an hour like an errand boy in a hallway reeking of disinfectant before he was permitted to see the examination results.
“Death from hemorrhaging into the mediastinum after a puncture wound to the aorta.“
Litera, who discovered him there, was the first person caught off guard. Before he could express his sympathy, Morava reeled off his plan for the day’s excursions, as if this were a morning strategy session after an ordinary night.