The Visible World by Mark Slouka Read Free Book Online Page A

was coming. I saw this with my own eyes, and I still don’t believe it.
    “Anyway, after Heydrich’s death, the underground freezes. Moravcová somehow manages to get her family out of Prague. The boy goes to the country, the husband to stay with an army friend in Královo Pole. Moravcová herself hides in Brno, which is hardly better. After a few weeks, when nothing happens, all three return one by one to their apartment in žiǽkov, who knows why. Maybe they’re worried that their absence will be noticed. Maybe they just want to come home.
    “Which is where Chalupa, the translator, comes into it. He gets a telephone call at four-thirty in the morning, is told to be ready in five minutes. He doesn’t know that the paratroopers hiding in the crypt of the church on Řesslova have been betrayed, that they will die in that crypt early the next morning, June 18—that the whole thing in fact has begun to crumble. He only knows that something is wrong.
    “You have to picture it. Three cars are waiting in the dark. A door opens, he climbs inside. He has no idea where they’re going until he hears the name. Some woman named Moravcová. An apartment in žiǽkov. He just sits there on the leather seat, holding his hat on his lap like a truant. What else can he do? No one speaks to him—they don’t trust him, naturally, and his ability to speak German only makes things worse because it means he’s neither one thing nor the other, hammer or nail.
    “It’s a quick trip. The city is almost deserted at that hour, and the limousine races through the intersections, crosses Bulhar Circle, then turns left up that long hill there. He knows they’ll be there in three minutes, then two, and then they’re there and Fleischer, the commanding bastard that morning, is already pounding on the door, swearing, when it opens and a bent, tiny woman appears, like a hedgehog in a fairy tale.
‘Schnell, wo wohnen die Moraveks?’
Fleischer yells as they shove past her, and Chalupa begins translating when the hedgehog calls out at the top of her lungs, as though she’s suddenly been struck deaf, ‘Would you like to take the stairs or the elevator,
mein Herr?’
but they don’t notice because they’re already rushing up the stairs and it’s too late for anything at all.
    “By the time Chalupa gets there, they’re all three standing with their faces against the wall, the father and the boy still in their pajamas, Madame Moravcová in a housedress, as though she’s been awake all night.
“Wo sind sie, wo sind sie?’
—Where are they?—Fleischer is roaring as the rest of them pour into the other rooms, as the sofa and chairs are tipped on their faces and pulled from the walls, and Chalupa begins to translate
Kdo, já nevím
...—
‘Wer? Ich weiss nicht
...’ and then stops because Fleischer has her by the throat and is striking her face, hard and fast, back and forth: ‘Wo—
sind
—
sie, Wo
—
sind
—
sie, Wo—sind
—
sie.’
She sinks to the floor.
‘Steh auf!’
She stands. ‘Please,’ she says, I have to go to the bathroom, please.’
    “Chalupa looks at her husband and son. They are both barefoot. There is the smell of shit in the room. The husband’s hair is standing up; his right leg is trembling as if he were listening to a very fast song. The boy is looking into the wallpaper. In the transcripts Chalupa claimed he never saw such terror in a face in his life. ‘Please, I have to go,’ Moravcová says again. She doesn’t look at her husband or her son. Chalupa translates:
‘Sie sagt, dass sie aufs Klo muss’
—She says she must go to the bathroom...and now he understands. Fleischer is striding into the other room, still looking for the paratroopers.
‘Nein.’
    “So there you have the basic situation. A wrecked room. Three people lined up against a wall. A single guard. ‘Please, I have to go,’ Madame Moravcová is pleading, over and over again, ‘please.’ Perhaps she realizes that their lives are