“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…
“Pepík!” 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 Pepík 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 Pepík’s weapon for his own.
“Thanks, Mr. Ludvík,” 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 Ko
ice 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.
ERVÍN BUBÁK.
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 Bredovská 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.